Rothschild Lecture Delves into Campus Protests
University of Pennsylvania scholar sees the need to rebuild trust.
If attendees at this year’s Rothschild lecture on “Campus Speech About Jews After October 7” at Emory University were expecting an emotionally charged discussion of this controversial topic, they might have come away somewhat disappointed. There wasn’t much fire in this year’s talk, which was presented by the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies.
That’s despite the fact that the professor, Seigal Ben Porath, is a distinguished scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written several books about how to navigate disputes on college campuses. Her parents were among the founders of kibbutz Nahal Oz, which was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, and she grew up in Israel.
Her lates book, “Cancel Wars,” was published last year, 10 months before the attack by the Hamas terrorists. It was meant to be a guide for faculty and students exploring issues around free speech and censorship.
She has observed this topic at close quarters. The University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches, was roiled last winter by a discussion of how far should free speech go on campus. The president of the university, Liz Magill, was forced to resign after she gave an ambiguous answer to a congressional committee that was investigating campus antisemitism. When asked whether “calling the genocide of Jews” was a violation of the university rules, she answered that it is “a context dependent decision.”
The chairman of the school’s board of trustees also resigned and the university lost a $100 million contribution from a financial services executive who said he was “appalled by the university’s stance on antisemitism on campus.” But in her Rothschild lecture, Ben Porath’s personal experience of these times barely got a mention.
Instead, she prescribed a longer view and the need to create real change about how we deal with the increase in campus antisemitism,
“I’m only just talking about speech. I know we have an uptick in antisemitic actions as well. But this is not a part of what I’m trying to fix here. We have to create enduring change, and the enduring change means that we, of course, need clear rules and expectations.”
But she found that, in recent years, even members of her own teaching profession have prompted antisemitic ideas. This is particularly true, she said, in the teaching by certain scholars about Israel.
“The context of critique about Israel within different professions, increasingly, is encountering antisemitic content,” Ben Porath said. “And I know this is a grand claim, I’m happy to back it up if people have questions about it, but my studies show and other people’s studies show that in some disciplines and professions, you can come in not knowing anything about Jews and come out harboring antisemitic perceptions.”
While she didn’t specifically elaborate about where this antisemitic content was most prevalent, others have found that in professional associations, particularly around critical ethnic studies, Israel and its Jewish supporters has been demonized. But as opposed as she is to these ideas, Ben Porath is mindful of not creating policies that are too specific when it comes to having a better set of rules for universities to follow.
“Don’t do detailed policies. We do need general rules that would say, for example, speech that is propagating hate is not welcome here. It doesn’t mean that we can censor it or that we should censor it. We have First Amendment protections. But when people propagate hatred, we could say in various ways and express in various ways that it’s not welcome.”
It was a fairly gentle prescription for peace on campuses that have been criticized for not doing enough to protect Jewish students. The head of Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, has reportedly taken an uncompromising stand against what has happened at a number of large universities.
“Individuals who literally are willing to celebrate violence, to laud murder, and to celebrate terrorism, that is a big probe for these campuses that parents entrust with their children to create environments where they can learn and be safe.”
Indeed, some have cracked down. Columbia University, which unceremoniously lost its most recent president, has suspended a chapter of the Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports Palestinians and the boycott and disinvestment movement that targets Israel. The most vociferous Palestinian organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, has been suspended at Columbia as well as Brandeis University and George Washington University.
What the Rothschild lecturer sees in this increasing conflict is a breakdown in trust and as she describes it, trust must be rebuilt if academic life is to thrive.
“I think really, the way to overcome even political polarization, or the effects of political polarization on American society and other democratic societies, is through shared contexts of learning, where we can learn to trust in the outcomes of our research or studies or questioning together.”
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