At Berkeley, banning Jews is free speech, protesting anti-Semitism isn’t.
During the Black Lives Matter riots, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ endorsed police defunding. “Elements of our country’s law enforcement culture dehumanize some of the very people whose safety and wellness police officers are sworn to protect,” she falsely claimed.
Two weeks ago, UC Berkeley called the police on a conservative truck protesting campus antisemitism and the “Jewish Free Zones” erected by elements of its law school.
Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky had claimed that the university couldn’t take any action against the “Jewish Free Zones” enacted by student organizations even as he admitted that they would bar 90% of Jewish speakers. “That is their First Amendment right. I find their statement offensive, but they have the right to say it. To punish these student groups, or students, for their speech would clearly violate the Constitution,” he argued.
That was in early October.
In late October, Chemerinsky responded to a truck rented by a conservative group protesting the “Jewish Free Zone” by threatening that, “we’re exploring whether there’s any action that can be taken against the Accuracy in Media for the truck.”
According to Chemerinsky and Berkeley, banning Jews is free speech, protesting the ban isn’t.
Chemerinsky described the ban of 90% of Jewish speakers as merely “offensive”, but condemned a protest against it as “despicable” and “outrageous behavior.”
Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media, had decided to challenge the culture of campus antisemitism by renting a truck to name and shame the students responsible for the “Jewish Free Zones”.
It’s a tactic that has been successfully used by groups fighting antisemitism like Canary Mission.
Recalling his own student days, Adam told me that, “When I attended the University of Florida we dealt with the same sort of nonsense and our campus Jewish groups wouldn’t do a thing about it.
“Most Jewish students and most Jewish student groups just want to go to class, live their life, and not be bothered. They think standing up to these bullies will only make things worse, so they remain silent and hope the problem goes away. Silence is never the correct response when dealing with bullies.”
Instead of silence, he sent a truck naming the perpetrators and declaring, “shame, shame.”
And UC Berkeley responded with violence and legal threats.
A previous AIM truck protesting UC Berkeley’s antisemitism had been met with thrown rocks and condemnations by the ADL, Berkeley’s Hillel and the local JCRC.
UC Berkeley administrators offered “emotional support” to students who felt upset by a truck with a picture of Hitler on it reading, “All in favor of banning Jews, raise your right hand.”
In response to the latest AIM protest truck, Adam Guillette told me that “the university called law enforcement on our truck last week. The police told our driver that he was violating a city statute and wasn’t allowed to park on the public street in a paid parking spot near the law school.”
It isn’t clear if such a regulation even exists, but what is clear is that despite his professed support for free speech, UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky attempted to suppress a non-violent protest against antisemitism by abusing police resources and local regulations.
“It’s a shame that Chemerinsky’s devotion to free speech extends to antisemites but not to those who combat them. It seems he’d rather see us silenced than those who wish to intimidate Jews,” the AIM president told Front Page Magazine.
Chemerinsky and UC Berkeley failed to protect Jewish students, but turned to the police to protect some of the students named by the AIM truck, like Jasmin Luz, of the Womxn of Color Collective, Jung Kim, of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, and Nicki Guivatchian, of the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association.”
The AIM truck had a very simple message, “Stand Up To the Ringleaders of Antisemitism at Berkeley.” Instead, UC Berkeley Law rushed to protect them while suppressing free speech.
“Whatever the disagreement on issues, to put students’ names on the side of the truck was despicable,” Dean Chemerinsky fulminated.
The disagreement, as Chemerinsky had already admitted, was a plan to, in his own words, “exclude about, I don’t know, 90 percent or more of our Jewish students.” But banning Jewish students is a “disagreement on issues” while naming antisemitic students is “despicable”.
According to him, naming Bull Connor at a protest was worse than the actual segregation.
Jewish campus groups proved equally useless.
Adam Naftalin-Kelman, Berkeley Hillel’s executive director, described the protest against antisemitism as “reprehensible” and “antithetical to building community”.
Naftalin had previously condemned a similar campaign by the David Horowitz Freedom Center: #StopTheJewHatredOnCampus named students involved in the BDS “Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign to destroy Israel”. Naftalin had claimed then that the Freedom Center posters were “counterproductive to creating a vibrant and healthy community”.
How Naftalin intends to build community with students who ban Jews has yet to be clarified.
“It’s consistently frustrating to see how little campus Jewish groups will do to stick up for themselves,” AIM President Adam Guillette told me.
Accuracy in Media intends to continue pressuring UC Berkeley with an email campaign and ongoing protests. And UC Berkeley has made it clear that it will continue protecting antisemites.
Dean Chemerinsky argued that the perpetrators of the “Jewish Free Zones” have “free speech rights, including to express messages that I and others might find offensive.”
He clearly doesn’t believe that those protesting against antisemitism do.
UC Regents Chair Richard Leib issued a statement falsely claiming that “the existence of ‘Jewish Free Zones’ at the campus are both incorrect and designed to inflame the situation” and that student groups have a First Amendment right to “express their views” even “when some of us find those views reprehensible or offensive.”
“That is the basis for free speech and UC will always support that,” he concluded.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ admitted that the bans on Jews were “regrettable”, but that “there is no legal basis for sanctioning, defunding or deregistering” the organizations involved in them.
All of that support for free speech for antisemites by UC Berkeley leaders falls apart when Jewish activists and conservative organizations actually protest against the antisemites.
Then UC Berkeley sends in the lawyers and the cops.
Are Christ, Chemerinsky or Leib willing to commit to the same level of free speech protection for Jews protesting against antisemitism as they do for antisemites protesting against Jews?
The difference in their rhetoric and the systemic discrimination of their responses makes it clear that they believe that banning Jews is more legitimate than protesting against those bans.
Their rhetoric and their actions reveal the underlying bias of their political sympathies.
Former Beverly Hills Mayor John Mirisch responded to the crisis at Berkeley by challenging Chemerinsky to recognize that “groups advocating for BDS are frequently looking to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the earth, as their oft-repeated slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ so vividly illustrates.” They’ve begun by trying to wipe Jewish students out of college campuses.
UC Berkeley continues providing cover to those hateful organizations, students and faculty.
Wellington says
Leftism, as evidenced here at Cal Berkeley, is very much like Islam—and like Nazism, Marxism and any other totalitarian ideology. It creates an inverted world where good is bad, bad is good and with a decided proclivity to be kind to the cruel and cruel to the kind, never mind your standard projection, mendacity and hypocrisy.
Every totalitarian ideology ruins everything. This is what Leftism in the West is doing right now.
Rarely says
Leftism is not the problem here. Anti-Semitism is much broader than that. It is as common in the far-right as in the far-left (and at all points in between).
Wellington says
No, Rarely, you got matters wrong again. Leftism is the chief culprit in the West today, here in America, the UK, Australia, France, Canada, et al.
Yes, anti-Semitism is a centuries long phenomenon and it is wicked, but it has been revived first and foremost because of Western Leftism, supported in our era by a religion which hates Jews and hates all non-believers (but especially Jews) and which religion should have disappeared long ago.
Doubt me? OK, minus Western Leftism from the equation here, all other things being equal. See what I mean? Frankly, I doubt you will. Your turn if you care.
Rarely says
Anti-Semitism is not the exclusive property of any particular ideology. The left may be dominating today’s conversation because of this university garbage but that doesn’t give the run-of-the-mill anti-Semites that have a different ideology a pass. It is abhorrent that universities allow it to go unchecked.
All “freedoms” have limits. e.g. your freedom to waive your arms around stops at my nose. Similarly, your Freedom of Speech ends where it denies my Freedom of Speech — or, at least, it should.
Anti-Semitism must be fought wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head.
Wellington says
Rarely: I have never tried to deny you your freedom of speech. You put up a strawman and then knocked it down. How noble of you.
And you didn’t even address my main point, that being that Leftism is the chief enemy in the West nowadays and not anti-Semitism. Yes, anti-Semitism is very ugly and of long duration but AGAIN I put it to you that minus Western Leftism other “sources” of anti-Semitism like Islam and Neo-Nazism would be of little account in the West.
Get this if you can and don’t go off again, if you will, on tangential if not irrelevant points. Stick to the matter at hand, i.e., Leftism is the chief culprit in the West in our era. But I bet you won’t, and assuming you respond you will be off the mark yet again since being off the mark seems to be a specialty of yours.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
So Wellington
Is Leftism a religion like islam that deserves First Amendment protections? Even if that would invoke Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance: “If a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. ” Which is precisely what we have w/ both Leftists and islamists. In fact, this rule had already razed all traces of tolerance in Berkley decades ago, not now
Wellington says
Leftism, Infidel, is a secular religion, rather like Marxism is. Islam, by contrast, fits in the mold of a traditional religion though it is an evil one.
Whether a secular religion or a traditional religion, all totalitarian ideologies like Leftism, Marxism, Nazism and Islam deserve First Amendment protections but this does not equate to them being respected, honored or promoted. Indeed, they should regularly be excoriated.
Finally, secular religions like Leftism and Marxism deserve First Amendment protections primarily because of the freedom of speech category while Islam, evil though it is like the Aztec religion of old or Satanism, deserves protection primarily in the pure freedom of religion category of the First Amendment, though freedom of speech also kicks in here where Islam and any other evil traditional religion is the matter in question. And the freedom of speech provision or the freedom of religion provision is enough in and of itself. You don’t need both though having both is a bonus. One is more than enough.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I’m fine w/ muslims having freedom of speech protections of the First Amendment. Not freedom of religion protections, though! No freedom that’s not available to Marxism or Nazism should be available to islam
Wellington says
I don’t see how per the First Amendment, Infidel, you can deny Islam freedom of religion protection. I don’t think you would prevail in any court of law here in America with your position.
Satanism is also a protected religion per the First Amendment and also that scam of scams, Scientology. The key is not to deny religious status to evil or bogus religions but rather to make sure such belief systems are regularly and almost universally denigrated and mocked. If this happened with Islam, Mo’s creed having religious protection would be of little to no account. Respect for Islam and actually more to the point disrespect for Islam, not protection for Islam as a religion, is the key factor.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I’m not for giving islam any privilege/right that’s not available to Nazism or Marxism. Conversely, I’m for giving the latter 2 any right that is available to islam. Talking here of course about the First Amendment
Keith O says
HUH, and here’s me thinking that universities were bastions of free thinking and equality.
We can only hope that the Jewish students continue to fight against this blatant racism.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
The ‘were’ in your statement is pretty important. As in ‘once upon a time’. It hasn’t been the case on campus for decades now, and I believe this is epidemic in the English speaking world at least: don’t know about countries in Latin America, Africa, mainland Europe or Asia
eximius says
Perhaps someone should inform Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin about a little thing called the Civil Rights Act of 1964?! You cannot legally discriminate based on religion! Why is this being allowed in the US?
Wellington says
“Why is this being allowed in the US?”
Because Leftism, call it modern liberalism if you will, has overtaken old-fashion liberalism and the former hates such wonderful things as free speech and freedom of religion unless the religion is Islam or at least not Christianity or Judaism.
It is imperative to grasp that Leftthink has overtaken one of the two major political parties here in America—and the other major political party, though having some stalwart people, is still largely led or influenced by woeful persons like McConnell, McCarthy, Rove and Bush 43.
Rarely says
Leftism is not the problem here — just plain old anti-Semitism — on steroids perhaps because of the muslim influence but plain old anti-Semitism nonetheless.
Wellington says
Oh, I see. Leftism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, is that about it, Rarely?
My God, are you clueless. What’s going on at Berkeley and sundry other universities in America who are full mode into BDS has nothing to do with Leftism. Right.
Walter Sieruk says
At the University of California, Berkeley that there eve even are Jewish free zones shows that there is much stealth jihadist infiltration and outright influence in that institution of higher learning. Be it from Muslims from Hamas or Saudi Arabia or even both working together against their “mutual enemy the Jews” this anti-Jewish hate is disturbing. We need to learn from history but not repeat it.
With this information it’s therefore very appropriate to , once again , quote the wisdom of the former US President ,William Howard Taft , who in a speech ,rightly , declared “Antisemitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.”
James Lincoln says
Parents should NOT send their children to UC Berkeley – a crappy leftist / anti-Semitic indoctrination center.
Government funding should be halted – and alumni should stop ALL donations.
James Lincoln says
May I add that UC Berkeley was once an excellent University that championed free-speech and robust debate.
No longer…
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Well, since this is the People’s Republic of California that we are talking about, government funding to a place that breeds young communists ain’t gonna be halted. And I’m willing to bet that their alumini are the same. They usually work for what passes for ‘tech’ these days – Google, Amazon, Apple, et al, or if they are Liberal Art graduates, they probably have a cushy job as staff of a Democrat state or federal official, and contribute to it
I do wish that at least Jews would stop sending their kids there, except that 65% of them, as per the elections last week, still vote (D). I guess Darwin’s award applies here
James Lincoln says
Infidel,
Excellent points, all unfortunately true.