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Free Speech and Anti-Semitism
(Wall Street Journal) Ruth R. Wisse - In December the Senate passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act in response to the escalation of anti-Jewish hostility in America, especially on the fringes of politics and in institutions of higher learning. The Senate bill itself understates the problem by treating anti-Semitism under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. Were anti-Semitism historically a matter of discrimination alone, it could not have generated the extermination of the Jews of Europe or the perpetual Arab war against Israel. Discrimination is merely one byproduct of anti-Semitism. The writer is a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard.