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Students Are Shouting Down Pro-Israel Speakers - and Silencing Free Speech
(Washington Post) Cary Nelson and David Greenberg - Since 2014, there has been a disturbing surge in the number of invited campus speakers being repeatedly interrupted or actually prevented from delivering a public lecture. A startling share of these silencing efforts has been directed at Israelis or other speakers sympathetic to Israel. Behind this spike is an idea called "anti-normalization," which holds that any activities that might "normalize" relations between Israelis and Palestinians - from children's soccer leagues to collaborative environmental projects - should be rejected because they treat both parties as having legitimate grievances. Joint projects are to be shunned unless they begin with the premise that Israel is the guilty party. In the past, shouting down speakers was regarded as exceptional and a scandalous violation of academic freedom. Upholders of free-speech rights insisted that at an institution of higher learning, you don't shout people down; a liberal education requires that all views be given a hearing. Free-speech principles, after all, are either universal or they become politicized, subject to the whim of those in power. The growing practice of silencing pro-Israel speakers - of denying them the right to be treated as equals in campus debates - constitutes a dire threat to academic freedom. It is more important than ever that universities create opportunities for students and faculty to hear and engage with ideas that they don't share. Their leaders must defend more vocally than they have thus far the free-speech rights of all speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cary Nelson is an English professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. David Greenberg is a history professor at Rutgers University. They are members of the Alliance for Academic Freedom.