There has been a debate going on at UC Berkeley’s law school, one which involves free speech and questions about Israel and Palestine. The basic backdrop is that a campus group called Law Students for Justice in Palestine added a bylaw which said no “Zionist” speakers were allowed.

In August, Law Students for Justice in Palestine announced that it, along with the eight other groups, had adopted a provision that it would “not invite speakers that 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.”

The student group said the ban was meant to promote the welfare of Palestinian students and was part of a broader provision aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

Some Jewish students expressed concern and tensions flared within the law school. Noah Cohen, a law student at Berkeley, said that the bylaw was an example of how antisemitic rhetoric was being normalized in the United States.

The bylaw was initially only of concern to students on campus but that changed when it became news after Kenneth Marcus, who was the chief of the civil rights division of the Department of Education under President Trump, wrote an opinion piece about it titled “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones.”

If it wasn’t so frightening, one might be able to recognize the irony in the sight of campus progressives trying so hard to signal progressive virtue that they fall victim to a deeper moral shame.

Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism. And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students…

Anti-Zionism is flatly antisemitic. Using “Zionist” as a euphemism for Jew is nothing more than a confidence trick. Like other forms of Judeophobia, it is an ideology of hate, treating Israel as the “collective Jew” and smearing the Jewish state with defamations similar to those used for centuries to vilify individual Jews.

The article went viral and suddenly this was the only topic about Berkeley anyone wanted to talk about. Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote a brief response noting that only a handful (8) groups out of over 100 had chosen to include such a bylaw and that any student was still allowed to join any group (just not allowed to speak). But Marcus responded:

Chemerinsky misses the point when he insists that all clubs admit Jewish students as members. No one denies this. Nevertheless, an unmistakable signal is sent to those same students when they are told that they would be barred from appearing as invited speakers. This sends a clear signal: Jews are not welcome, unless they deny their support for Israel which, for many, is an integral element of Jewish identity.

This really gets to the core of the matter, at least legally. No group is allowed to ban people based on race, ethnicity, etc. But Zionism is not a race or ethnicity even if most Jews would consider themselves Zionists. Dean Chemerinsky argued along those lines, i.e. that the distinction meant the bylaws were legal, but at the same time he agreed that they were anti-Semitic.

Mr. Chemerinsky called the bylaw antisemitic and not in the spirit of open dialogue. What was especially troubling, he said, was that it prohibited Zionists from speaking about any topic at all to the groups, effectively excluding a large share of Jews.

Dylan Saba, a recent graduate of the Berkeley law school and a lawyer for Palestine Legal, which has been advising the students behind the bylaw, said that there was a double standard in how Palestinian students were portrayed in campus speech debates, noting that Hillel has said that it does not host anti-Zionists as speakers.

Hillel adopted guidelines in 2010 that prohibit chapters from collaborating with speakers or groups that “delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel.” The rules sparked a revolt among some local chapters. Swarthmore College ditched the Hillel name over the matter.

It’s worth noting that Chemerinsky, while clearly a progressive, has been pretty good about standing up for free speech in the past. It’s also worth saying that most groups practice this policy even if they don’t make it a formal bylaw. For instance, a campus pro-life group is probably not inviting a lot of pro-choice speakers. What’s different here obviously is that pro-choice speakers, to use the former example, aren’t largely of one race or background while “Zionist” speakers are.

There are some insightful comments attached to this story, starting with this one which emphasizes something that is glossed over in the NY Times story.

This article really misses the mark on what people are upset about. I would be surprised if even the most ardent Zionists were upset that the Berkeley chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine does not allow pro-Zionist speakers. What upsets people are the other eight groups that adopted the same bylaw the article fails to name: The Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Womxn of Color Collective, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Queer Caucus, Community Defense Project, Women of Berkeley Law, and Law Students of African Descent.

Why does being a Zionist disqualify you from speaking at the Queer Caucus? It’s ironic for such a group to target supporters of a country with vast protections for the LGBTQ community. Should someone who happens to support Israel not be allowed to express their views on criminal justice reform to members of the Community Defense Project?

And this comment from a professor.

I’m an associate professor at an R1 university. My students are wonderfully sensitive about all aspects of DEI— except anti semitism. I hear wildly anti semitic comments followed by “criticism of Israel isn’t anti Semitic”. The world’s oldest prejudice seems to be one of the most entrenched.

The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is very thin and when it comes to supporters of BDS often invisible.