The Purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act

The point of the House-passed (and misnamed) Antisemitism Awareness Act is not to empower the Education Department to sue and defund colleges under civil rights law. It is to make lawsuits unnecessary by chilling expression.

TGIF: Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism: The Invidious Conflation

I and others have warned that enactment of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act now before Congress would threaten free speech and free inquiry on America’s college campuses and beyond. As I’ve explained, this bill incorporates a conception — a “definition” plus potential examples — of anti-Semitism that conflates criticism of Israel’s founding and continuing abuse of the Palestinians with anti-Semitism for the purpose inoculating Israel from such criticism. Anti-Zionist Jews and others have objected to this conflation for over 70 years. 

What makes us so confident in predicting a threat to free speech?

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

Interview on the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act

Scott Horton and I discuss the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act here. For more, see my article "Defining Anti-Semitism, Threatening Free Speech."

TGIF: Defining Anti-Semitism, Threatening Free Speech

In May the benign-sounding Anti-Semitism Awareness Act appeared before the U.S Congress “to provide for consideration a definition of anti-Semitism for the enforcement of Federal antidiscrimination laws concerning education programs or activities.” 

No big deal? Let us see.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!