Last week, the House of Representatives passed a measure that, if approved by the Senate, would more fully extend the protections of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to Jews. The bill prompted backlash from the left, the far right, and civil libertarians, mostly based on claims that it would stifle free expression. David E. Bernstein explains that, contra these critics, the bill “has nothing to do with criminal law, does not ‘ban’ anything, and thus does not criminalize speech.” Nor does it prohibit any kind of speech under civil law.
In Bernstein’s view, the uproar from the left is connected to its commitment to the campus diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) regime:
Currently, there is a double standard, with anti-Semitic speech that might contribute to a hostile environment treated with much more equanimity than speech hostile to other groups. This is illegal discrimination against Jewish students, and is essential to the entire DEI edifice. If . . . new laws incentivize universities to treat members of all protected classes (including white students discriminated against based on race) equally, then the whole ideological structure of DEI as we know it, which depends on preferences for favored groups, collapses.
More about: American law, Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Speech, Israel on campus