Kenneth Stern’s Testimony Before US Senate Committee

BY HANK REICHMAN

Kenneth Stern is the director of the Bard Middle for the Research of Hate, which works to extend the intense research of human hatred, and methods to fight it.  Earlier than that he directed the Justus and Karin Rosenberg Basis and earlier than that he was for 25 years director of the American Jewish Committee’s division on antisemitism and extremism.  Whereas at AJC he was the lead drafter of the textual content of what’s now referred to as the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.  In its 2022 assertion, “Legislative Threats to Tutorial Freedom: Redefinitions of Antisemitism and Racism,” AAUP’s Committee A quoted Stern’s assertion earlier than Congress that the definition “was by no means meant as a device to focus on or chill speech on a school campus.”   Stern’s 2020 guide, The Battle over the Battle: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate, referred to as out efforts by each pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli teams to stifle debate and scholarship.

On March 27, Stern testified earlier than the US Senate Committee on Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions listening to on “Antisemitic Disruptions on Campus: Making certain Secure Studying Environments for All College students.”  Stern’s in depth written testimony is properly price studying in full and is obtainable right here.  He additionally graciously shared with me notes from his oral testimony and permission to make use of these and his formal submission in presenting his views.

Stern started his testimony by emphasizing 5 key factors (elaborated a bit extra absolutely within the written submission):

1) College students – together with Jewish college students — have a proper to not be victims of true threats, harassment, intimidation, bullying or discrimination, not to mention assault.  They, nevertheless, ought to anticipate to listen to concepts that lower them to their core.

2) Makes an attempt to have an effect on the campus that aren’t grounded in safety of free speech and tutorial freedom aren’t prone to work.  Something that smacks of a hate speech code will backfire.

3) Current threats towards funding with no full investigation and a possibility to be heard aren’t solely possible unlawful, however horrible coverage.

4) Arresting college students must be a final resort, not a primary impulse, particularly for technical violations of guidelines.

5) The campus setting will be improved with applications and programs.  If we bludgeon the campus into submission we threat destroying an establishment which has made America the envy of the world.

Stern continued by noting that his 2020 guide was motivated by his concern that campus tensions surrounding the battle “threaten increased training, as either side tries to silence the opposite.  Professional-Palestinian activists typically use a heckler’s veto, promote tutorial boycotts, and typically exclude Zionists from social areas – which is nearly all the time McCarthy-like and typically clearly antisemitic.  However I’m extra apprehensive about using regulation to silence pro-Palestinian speech.”

For a while, Stern identified, some pro-Israel teams have sought authorities assist for efforts to silence their critics:

For those who look again on the materials used to assist the Antisemitism Consciousness Act (AAA) when it was handed by the Senate in 2016, proponents cited examples about how antisemitism was being handled otherwise than different types of perceived campus bigotry.  One case cited was the suspension of a Marquette professor for an alleged anti-gay weblog put up, the opposite the stopping of the displaying of the movie American Sniper, as a result of it was alleged to be anti-Muslim.  Clearly, each situations have been ones the place free speech and/or tutorial freedom have been violated.  The AAA proponents successfully mentioned violate these ideas for us too, a message I discovered and nonetheless discover deeply troubling.  If one goes to have a precept about speech, it has to use to speech one doesn’t like too.  That doesn’t imply ignore the speech (which will be countered, uncovered and/or organized towards), however slightly it means to not use legal guidelines or interventions like a heckler’s veto to relax or cease it.

Is anti-Zionism essentially antisemitism?  Right here’s what Stern informed the senators:

I’m a liberal Zionist.  I consider in Israel’s proper to exist, and a hyperlink to Israel is essential to my Jewish id.  That’s true for almost all of American Jews.

However there’s a rising variety of Jews, notably youthful ones, whose Judaism leads them to embrace an anti-Zionist place.  They’ll’t justify the existence of a Jewish state, particularly with its implications for Palestinians, with the Jewish instructions about repairing the world and the right way to deal with the stranger.

I disagree with these younger Jews about Zionism, however I’m not going to name them antisemites.  I actually don’t need the federal government to do that, to successfully come down on one facet or the opposite of a deep, and  typically visceral, communal divide.  As I documented in my guide, this inner Jewish query – whether or not a specific view of Zionism and Israel is required to be contained in the tent – is contentious. . . .

I additionally ask you to take into account that whereas a lot of the instances of harassment of Jewish college students have focused pro-Israel ones, anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian Jewish college students have additionally been harassed, both as a part of harassment of pro-Palestinian activists typically, or particularly concentrating on them as Jews, wherein they’re seen as “kapos” or “traitors,” and typically handled like such.

Turning to the Trump administration’s current revocations of funding and different threats in an effort to, allegedly, fight campus antisemitism, Stern testified:

I’m alarmed on the current efforts to sort out antisemitism with brute drive and risk.

Let me be clear – I’ve been a robust proponent of Title VI as A (versus THE ONLY)treatment for campus antisemitism.  [However, . . . ]

The brand new coverage of threatening funding with out going via the method of a superb religion investigation and due course of could appear to some as taking campus antisemitism significantly, however it’ll hurt Jewish college students – the truth is all of us – in each the quick and future.  And it could properly legally backfire. . . .

[L]ook at what occurred at Columbia.  The college was seemingly bullied into submission, with out due course of, and in a method that may clearly exacerbate tensions on campus (not solely between teams with opposing politics, but additionally between college and the administration).  This can even make the longer term more durable for Jewish college students.  Change will probably be seen by many as not as ensuing from something apart from uncooked energy.

What is going to the threatened cuts do?  We all know a few of what they’ll accomplish.  They’ll possible impression analysis on most cancers, diabetes, and different initiatives.  Cures could also be delayed.  College students’ work will possible be disrupted – together with that of Jewish college students.  On this setting of risk, the very best and brightest from world wide, who wished to be taught within the US and perhaps keep and contribute, will now possible go elsewhere.

Columbia’s settlement final Friday to lots of the administration’s calls for, particularly people who signaled that authorities can dictate placing an instructional division in receivership, has and could have disastrous results.  The long-established thought of school governance of upper training now appears underneath assault. . . .

And naturally overseas college students will possible go elsewhere after the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a inexperienced card holder, as a result of, based on the administration, he supposedly distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda.”  Are we that weak as a rustic that one pupil – one who didn’t cover his id behind a masks (as some protestors do for concern they are going to be focused for protected speech, or to flee punishment for prison acts) – allegedly handed out such propaganda, and that is “a risk to the overseas coverage and nationwide safety pursuits of america.”  Severely?  The US’ nationwide safety and overseas coverage is threatened by a former pupil allegedly distributing a leaflet?

Aren’t we, as a rustic, sturdy sufficient to listen to folks advocate issues with which we strongly disagree, even discover deeply hateful or offensive?  Isn’t it international locations like Russia and Iran and China we level to, slightly than America, the place simply expressing an opinion might get you in bother with the regulation, chilling others from expressing that very same opinion too?

Isn’t there a basic distinction between advocating for a despicable group or thought, and really violating the regulation, corresponding to giving precise materials assist for terrorism, for instance? . . .

Are we once more shedding sight of the excellence between precise harassment and true threats, on onehand, and advocacy on the opposite?

Stern went on to counsel to the senators constructive methods wherein campus tensions over Israel and Palestine — certainly, over many controversial points — may be extra efficiently managed than by an unique concentrate on time, place and method restrictions and disciplinary processes, providing, as he did in his guide, some concrete examples of how campuses would possibly “use their most essential device — training.”

In his written testimony (summarized as properly orally), Stern supplied this conclusion:

There isn’t any query that tensions on campus have escalated for the reason that assaults of October 7, 2023 to at present.  Professional-Israel college students on some campuses the place Gaza protests have occurred are understandably burdened, as a result of their classmates have loudly expressed political beliefs that pro-Israel Jewish college students possible discover detestable and deeply disturbing.  However let’s not neglect the doxing of pro-Palestinian college students (which embrace Jews amongst them) and the escalating effort to make use of regulation to suppress and punish their speech, threatening all of ours.

True threats, intimidation, assaults, bullying and such, disruption of lessons, obstruction of freedom of motion are issues that ought to not occur, and it’s affordable, the truth is essential, for college management to behave towards them.

My biggest fear is that we’re seeing a confluence of 4 issues:

1) A want to silence political speech due to the discomfort of many pro-Israel Jewish college students.

2) The gutting of the Division of Training and OCR, when complaints about antisemitism are pending.

3) A failure to contemplate that it isn’t solely pro-Israel Jewish college students who’re having difficulties on campus. It’s additionally anti-Zionist Jewish college students, Muslim college students, Arab and Palestinian college students, immigrant college students, and so many extra.

4) Most importantly, I fear concerning the failure of due course of and the threats towards universities, together with stripping funding and demanding that departments are put in receivership.

We’re not going to enhance the campus for Jews, or anybody else, by bullying and threatening.  In reality we’ll not solely hurt Jews on this hyper partisan setting, we’ll even be mirroring what some pro-Palestinian protestors are doing: demanding that there’s just one honest technique to see the political second.

We owe it to ourselves as a society constructed on free speech and tutorial freedom to do higher.

We can not burn down the home in an effort to reserve it.

Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of historical past at California State College, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Basis; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Tutorial Freedom and Tenure. His guide, The Way forward for Tutorial Freedom, primarily based partially on posts to this weblog, was revealed in 2019.  His Understanding Tutorial Freedom was revealed in October, 2021; a second version got here out this month.