THREAT TO DEMOCRACY - THE LAWYER CLASS TO BLAME
9 UC Berkeley Law School Groups Ban Majority of Jews from Speaking
Nine student groups at the University of California Berkeley Law School have banned any speakers that support Israel or Zionism, meaning that the overwhelming majority of Jews will be excluded from addressing those groups.
Civil rights attorney Kenneth L. Marcus noted in the Jewish Journal that the new “progressive” policy, on the campus that gave rise to the Free Speech Moment in the 1960s, amounts to an effective policy of antisemitism, and creates what are effectively “Jewish-free zones” at a public university.
Marcus wrote Sep. 28:
Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism. And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.
…
These exclusions reflect the changing face of campus antisemitism. The highest profile incidents are no longer just about toxic speech, which poisons the campus environment.
Now anti-Zionist groups target Jewish Americans directly.
A recent survey of the American Jewish Committee found that over 80% of American Jewish millennials believe that Israel is at least somewhat important to the survival of the Jewish people worldwide.
Some of the bans by anti-Israel groups are ironic. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to recognize LGBTQ rights, for example, and it is also the only country in the world to airlift Africans, en masse, to freedom and citizenship, as Israel has done with Ethiopian Jews.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Berkeley Law Dean Blames Media for Reporting On Jew-Free Zones
Kenneth Marcus, the former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, described a move by some Berkeley Law groups to ban speakers who support the existence of Israel, effectively most Jews, as creating, “Jewish-Free Zones”.
Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky responded by arguing, “There Are No ‘Jewish-Free’ Zones on the UC-Berkeley Campus”.
What’s Chemerinsky’s comeback?
To state it plainly: There is no “Jewish-Free Zone” at Berkeley Law or on the UC-Berkeley campus. The Law School’s rules are clear that no speaker can be excluded for being Jewish or for holding particular views. I know of no instance where this has been violated.
Allow me to explain the controversy that sparked this misguided furor.
After that confident opening, Chemerinsky’s argument boils down to it hasn’t happened yet.
“A handful of student organizations—fewer than 10 out of over 100—initially adopted the by-law,” he writes.
That’s 9 out of over 100. Or somewhere in the neighborhood of 10%.
If 10% of student organizations (if even 1%) had adopted bylaws banning most black speakers, we’d be talking about nothing else for the next six months, resulting in multiple investigations, massive settlements and several books.
“Most importantly, no group has violated the Law School’s policy and excluded a speaker on account of being Jewish or holding particular views about Israel. Such conduct, of course, would be subject to sanctions.”
It takes a whole lot more to argue that Berkeley Law isn’t a “Jewish-Free Zone” than ‘No one acted on it yet”.
Chemerinsky can point out that the bylaws haven’t led to actual action, that we know of yet, but ridiculing concerns about discriminatory codes because they haven’t been, to his knowledge, enforced yet is a dishonest position.
“At this stage, all some student groups have done is express their strong disagreement with Israel’s policies. 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.”
Their speech isn’t at issue. They appear to have adopted bylaws that actually call for discriminatory activities.
“Student organizations signing the statement “will not invite speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.”
This is speech in the same sense that “No Blacks Allowed” and “No Jews, No Dogs” is speech.
There’s an argument to be made there, but that’s not actual civil rights laws. And no other group has discrimination legalized against it in this manner.
Chemerinsky goes beyond just minimizing what’s going on to attacking the Jewish Journal and other” some media outlets” that “have brought it worldwide attention.”
He claims that he is “convinced it is because they have a narrative they want to tell about higher education generally—and Berkeley, in particular—being antisemitic. They wanted to use this incident to fit their narrative, even though the facts simply don’t support the story they want to tell.”
This is frankly despicable.
Chemerinsky has presented no contradictory facts. He’s spun the existing ones. He argues that it somehow shouldn’t be an issue if 10% of student organizations ban Jews and that it’s a non-issue until someone is specifically banned. Had 10% of student organizations committed to banning Asian speakers, without action having taken place, the response would be dramatically different.
In a previous interview, the dean, who is an anti-Israel leftist, had admitted…
“The reality is, the message is seen by many students as antisemitic,” Chemerinsky told J.
Chemerinsky, speaking to J., added that “to say that anyone who supports the existence of Israel — that’s what you define as Zionism — shouldn’t speak would exclude about, I don’t know, 90 percent or more of our Jewish students.”
Now Chemerinsky backpedals to claim that the measure seen by many students as antisemitic and which would exclude 90% of Jewish students is a non-issue created by the media.
This is what bad spin and a worse coverup of campus antisemitism looks like.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
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