Monday, September 05, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
What should universities do when those Jewish students who are also Zionists are told they are not welcome in progressive spaces? After all, why should any student have to choose between their identity and their desire to be part of a political community? And if that’s the “ask,” pro-Israel Jewish students, whether desiring to join a progressive group or not, get the message, hurtful to them and harmful to the academic vibrancy of the campus: they either have to self-censor what they say about Israel, or risk the ostracism and pain of social shunning....But groups also have a right to be selective, to set their own rules for membership. The potential benefits may include allowing members to feel they share something important (such as a women’s group or one based on ethnicity or religion). That applies to politics too. One wouldn’t want to force a Young Republican club to include a Bernie Sanders supporter (or vice versa)....Groups – including those on campus – have a right of association. Most famously, years ago the organizers of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City refused to include a gay Irish group. As much as I had wished the organizers had made a different decision, they had a right to decide what their march would stand for. Likewise Hillels have the freedom to choose what speech they will allow under their banner....Universities must not tell groups what their principles have to be. If Israel/Palestine is a contentious issue on campus, there should be courses and other initiatives to encourage deep discussions of not only the issue, but why it is so divisive, and of how students might maintain their principles while avoiding the too easy temptation to paint classmates with different views as racists or antisemites. But if a group decides that in order to be a member, one has to have a particular view of Israel and Zionism, the right to make that decision must be respected. Those not invited in, even though exclusion hurts, can find other ways to express themselves, including by creating new groups and coalitions.
No.
Stern has a point that campus groups have the right to decide on the rules of membership. It makes sense that a Muslim group or a Black group or a women's group define themselves as spaces where they can feel free to express themselves and feel safe, and not have to self-censor because an outsider might be listening. The same would go for groups for victims of sexual abuse, for example.
But political groups are not the same - there should be no litmus test to join such a group. Bernie Sanders supporters should be allowed to attend the Young Republicans club as long as they are respectful and not disruptive. This is true even if they will report back what they have heard. Group meetings should be public and the speakers and attendees should not say anything that they would be embarrassed to say in public.
Yet even if one accepts the progressive idea of "safe spaces" for political opinions, Stern goes way beyond that. He is saying that a group about climate change or against racism and sexism can exclude Zionists, even though that is not at all what the group is about. He says that any progressive organization, on any issue, can include anti-Zionism as a litmus test for attendance and membership.
That is absurd. If the organization whose purpose has nothing to do with Israel says all members must be anti-Zionist, they are indeed adding an antisemitic dimension to their group. The proof is that they do not have similar litmus tests for other political opinions - they do not exclude those who support the death penalty or Bashar Assad or Vladimir Putin. They don't ask prospective members their opinions on nuclear energy or Uyghurs. The only issue that they consider beyond the pale is Zionism.
That double standard is antisemitism.
Even worse, Stern downplays the pain of Jewish students who feel unwelcome from these spaces where they have so much in common with the group members. He disingenuously says that Zionists can simply create new groups when excluded from progressive spaces.
Really? Is it so trivial to create a competing Zionist group against sexual abuse or against racism, to get funding, to get enough members? That is nonsensical. And it is offensive.
I cannot believe that Stern doesn't realize that. The entire reason Jews created their own hospitals and medical schools and hotels and clubs a century ago is because they were reacting to systemic and endemic antisemitism. Stern is saying that we should accept modern antisemitism and act the same way our Jewish ancestors did in the face of bigotry.
He is saying to accept this bigotry and work around it, rather than expose it and fight it head on.
This doesn't sound like the position that someone who fights antisemitism would take.
