Anti-Semitism on campus: ban it or tolerate it?

Battle of Ideas festival 2024, Sunday 20 October, Church House, London

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

With ‘Gaza solidarity’ camps becoming a prominent feature of university life in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, many worry that support for the Palestinian cause often mutates into expressions of anti-Semitism. As many Jewish students, especially those supporting Israel, face an intimidatory atmosphere, there are important questions to ask about where the boundaries lie in terms of supporting free speech. At what point does political hostility to Israel and to Zionism, or calls for an Intifada and support for proscribed organisations such as Hamas, cross the line into Jew hatred? And where it does, how should those keen to promote toleration of different views and eager to defend free speech respond to demands to introduce restrictions on the expression of anti-Semitic views among academics and students?

These tensions are evident in the responses of universities and police. When a survey by UK Lawyers for Israel found students had been left scared to be ‘visibly Jewish’ on UK campuses, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, asserted that universities should work with the police to ‘stamp out’ anti-Semitism on campuses. In the US, however, after trying to navigate a path ‘upholding academic principles and treating everyone with fairness and compassion’, Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, resigned after authorising police officers to swarm the campus and arrest around 100 students who were occupying a university building.

Some say that banning anti-Semitic speech is the only option to create a safe campus environment for Jewish students. The UK government went further, citing potential harms to Jewish students as the reason to ‘pause’ implementation of a recent act aimed at securing free speech on campus.

However, others argue that charges of anti- Semitism are increasingly used to shut down criticism of the Israeli government and the state of Israel. In the US, where an Anti-Semitism Awareness Act threatens to broaden out the definition to encompass a wide range of hitherto acceptable speech, free-speech campaigners FIRE worry about the suffocating threat to speech on campus for pro-Palestine students. While social-justice calls to ‘protect safety’ have become a standard means to silence speech, is there a danger that the pro-Israeli side is adopting the same tactics to silence views they disagree with?

Are increasing efforts to ban anti-Semitism on campus a threat to free debate, or an imperative for creating a civil atmosphere in universities? In terms of protests and free speech, where do the boundaries lie in terms of actions and speech that should be defended? What are the new issues that the Gaza-solidarity protests raise, compared to the campus demonstrations against the Vietnam War during the 1970s? Should anti-Semitism be banned on campus, or should it be tolerated in the belief that sunlight is the best disinfectant?

SPEAKERS
Professor David Abulafia
professor emeritus of Mediterranean history, University of Cambridge; associate editor, History Reclaimed; president and trustee, Pharos Foundation

Daniel Ben-Ami
journalist; creator, Radicalism of Fools project on rethinking anti-Semitism; author, Ferraris for All: in defence of economic progress

Baroness Ruth Deech
crossbench peer, House of Lords

Greg Lukianoff
president and CEO, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

Edward Skidelsky
senior lecturer in Philosophy, University of Exeter; director, Committee for Academic Freedom

CHAIR
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want