France, unlike the U.S., offers no formal guarantees of its citizens’ right to freedom of speech, in part because this right is deeply ingrained in French politics and culture. But, argues Michel Gurfinkiel, two recent instances in which Jewish intellectuals were sued for writing about Islam suggests that this needs to change. Take, for example, the case of Georges Bensoussan:

Bensoussan, sixty-four, is a French academic of Moroccan-Jewish origin, specializing in the history of modern Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust, and the author of several seminal books on these issues. . . . During a debate aired on France-Culture (France’s cultural government-run radio station) on October 15, 2015, Bensoussan remarked that anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in the family culture of French Muslims. [Paraphrasing the work of] an Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, . . . Bensoussan . . . used a colloquial French expression: “in Arab families, . . . anti-Semitism is being ingested with the mother’s milk.”

Many politically correct intellectuals or organizations charged Bensoussan of using “biological,” meaning inherently “racist,” vocabulary. Interestingly enough, no Muslim, North African, or anti-racist group formally sued Bensoussan in court. Chances are that lawyers warned about the paucity of the charges. However, one group, the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), “signaled” the matter to the public prosecutor’s office at the very last moment. And it is the public prosecutor’s office—which, under French law, belongs to the government’s judiciary branch—that resolved to prosecute Bensoussan. . . .

Bensoussan’s trial started on January 25. [The] French League for the Rights of Man, a venerable human-rights advocacy group that evolved over the years into a left-wing group, decided to join CCIF against Bensoussan. So did SOS Racisme, an anti-racist organization with strong ties to the French Socialist party founded in 1984. . . [M]aybe a French First Amendment will be a necessity after all.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.