With incidents of anti-Semitism increasing in the U.S. and worldwide, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in December that many consider chilling to free speech. The order extended protection to Jews under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and included anti-Zionism in the definition of anti-Semitism. A conservative pro-Israel group, Stand With Us, wants to establish as discriminatory and even anti-Semitic opposition to Israeli government treatment of Palestinians and occupation of the West Bank. Jewish scholars David N. Myers and Chaim Seidler-Feller, Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2020, are concerned about an incident at UCLA where Stand With Us got the Trump administration to investigate an incident in which a Jewish student felt harassed and discriminated against when she engaged in discussion with a guest speaker who made critical remarks about Zionism and Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
FIRE’s Tyler Coward, National Review, December 16, 2020, is leery of examples, including comparing Israel and Nazi policy, feeding a definition of anti-Semitism in Trump’s order, “…these examples directly implicate protected speech. There is no question that the First Amendment protects a student’s comparison of Chinese Uighur camps to Nazi concentration camps. The same goes for comparisons of Syrian, Russian, or even U.S. policies to those of the Nazis. Similar criticisms of Israel and Israeli policy toward Palestinians, accurate or not, also enjoy constitutional protection. Under the new executive order, students and faculty must be cautious about criticizing Israel in ways that they could permissibly criticize any other country. This is unlawful viewpoint discrimination under long-standing First Amendment jurisprudence.”
For related FAC coverage on the issue, click here.