Addressing the current climate on college campuses, where the expression of certain views is condemned as harassment or “micro-aggression” and attempts are made to silence or punish whoever expresses them, Alan Dershowitz wonders why such outrage is never directed at those who engage in outright anti-Semitism:
The point is not only that some students care less about freedom of expression in general than about protecting all students from “micro-aggressions.” It is that many of these same students are perfectly willing to make other students with whom they disagree feel unsafe and offended by their own micro- and macro-aggressions. Consider, for example, a recent protest at the City University of New York by Students for Justice in Palestine that blamed high tuition on “the Zionist administration [of the university, which] invests in Israeli companies—companies that support the Israeli occupation—hosts birthright programs and study-abroad programs in occupied Palestine [i.e., Israel], and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY though Zionist content of education.”
Let’s be clear what they mean by “Zionist”: they mean “Jew.” There are many Jewish administrators at City University. Some are probably Zionists. Others are probably not. Blaming Zionists for high tuition is out and out anti-Semitism. It is not “micro-aggression.” It is in-your-face macro-aggression against City University’s Jews.
Yet those who protest “micro-aggressions” against other minorities are silent when it comes to Jews. This is not to engage in comparative victimization, but rather to expose the double standard, the selective outrage, and the overt hypocrisy of many of those who would sacrifice free speech on the altar of political correctness, whose content they seek to dictate.
Read more on Gatestone: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6870/selective-outrage-on-campus