At the University of California, Berkeley’s prestigious law school, a group called Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) has launched a campaign—apparently with some success—to convince other student organizations to adopt a bylaw pledging not only to support boycotting, divestment from, and sanctioning Israel (BDS) but also that they “will not invite speakers [who] have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” Richard Cravatts comments:
In language that is Orwellian in its attempt to paint bigotry as a virtue, the bylaw stated that student groups must proclaim that they are “publicly stipulating the organization’s position of anti-racism and anti-settler colonialism to speakers, ensuring that proposals for speakers emphasize the organization’s desire for equality and inclusion.” All of this is for the supposed purpose of creating “a safe and inclusive space for Palestinian students and students that are in support of the liberation of Palestine.”
After the law school’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, mildly criticized the bylaw in an open letter, LSJP took to Instagram again to suggest that free speech should only be enjoyed by the oppressed and “marginalized” like themselves. Anyone supporting the racist, apartheid regime of Israel should not have access to the same expression, they claimed. It is perfectly reasonable, they asserted, for pro-Israel dialogue to be suppressed.
The notion that a vocal minority of self-important student ideologues can determine what views may or may not be expressed at a particular law school is not only antithetical to the purpose of a university but vaguely fascistic. It grants power to the few to decide what can be said and what must be suppressed. It is what former Yale University president Bartlett Giamatti characterized as the “tyranny of group self-righteousness.”
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/muzzling-free-speech-at-berkeley-law-school/