Motivated by the rising tide on college campuses of anti-Semitic sentiment—often in the form of hatred of the Jewish state—the U.S. Senate passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would effectively expand the 1964 Civil Rights Act so as better to apply to discrimination against Jews. In particular, its passage would make it easier for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to respond to and punish the mistreatment of Jews at universities. It now awaits passage by the House of Representatives. Ruth Wisse, while applauding the bill, argues that it is poorly matched to the realities of anti-Semitism:
Anti-Semitism cannot be subsumed into the framework of the Civil Rights Act because anti-Semitism is not discrimination. It may exhibit the key features of prejudice, bias, and bigotry—and therefore result in discrimination. But it is different in kind. Anti-Semitism is a modern political phenomenon—an ideology that anchors or forms part of a political movement and serves a political purpose. It arose alongside other ideologies like liberalism, conservatism, socialism, Communism, anarchism, and (somewhat later) fascism, opposing some of them and merging with others. Anti-Semitism was the most protean of these ideologies and was therefore valuable in forging coalitions even among otherwise competing groups. To take anti-Semitism seriously, let alone to subdue it, requires first recognizing its political nature.
An ideology may be defined as a system of beliefs or ideals, a shaping concept in politics, held by an individual or a group. As a political ideology, anti-Semitism enjoys the protection of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act may better protect Jewish students from physical harassment and intimidation, but as long as our actual awareness of the roots and character of anti-Semitism in contemporary America remains shallow and poorly informed, it will not lessen the clear and present danger.
What we require is less a law to punish discrimination than a commitment to foster awareness of the facts. We might imagine that the academic world would foster just such a commitment. But we would know better if we understood the political character of anti-Semitism.
Politics organized against the Jews has been practiced, at one time or another, in every Western society and throughout the Middle East for more than a century. This organizing principle has been adapted to the purposes of Communism, fascism, pan-Arab nationalism, and progressivism, and it has persisted as an anti-liberal force that appeals to extremists on the right and the left. Not in the name of special pleading on behalf of the Jews, its proximate target, or the liberal order, its larger enemy, but even simply because anti-Jewish politics is such an enduring and ubiquitous force, and because it has not yet been adequately studied as a political strategy, it is time for scholars of political and social life to bring to it the same urgency and rigor they have brought to virtually every other meaningful political phenomenon. That is what real awareness would require.
Read more on National Affairs: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-functions-of-anti-semitism