People love to accuse me of hypocrisy on campus speech and antisemitism, given my longstanding support for speech over conflicting antidiscrimination laws, but my position remains consistent.
There are three separate but related issues with regard to campus antisemitism and speech (note that vandalism, threats, disruptive behavior etc., aren’t in the ambit of free speech, nor is enforcing content-neutral reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on protests an infringement of freedom of speech).
Q. Should speech (even grossly offensive speech) be protected vs. claims that speech, as such, creates a hostile environment, including vs. Jews?
A. Yes. Universities should not be held liable for permitting even grossly offensive speech.
Q. Should universities be held liable for discrimination for treating Jews differently when they complain of a hostile environment than how they treat other groups?
A. Yes, because that’s a content-neutral question of equal treatment as required by civil rights law, not suppressing speech. Whatever policies a university has, formal or informal, they can’t be different for Jews than for everyone else.
Q. Third, is the proper solution to avoid the latter problem to protect speech equally or to suppress speech equally?
A. Protect speech equally.
