Why UC Regents report on intolerance works

The sculptor Rodin was once asked how he would approach a likeness of the vibrant Theodore Roosevelt. He replied that his job was to get the blood flowing through the marble. Most university statements on intolerance, racism and anti-Semitism are lifeless and have platitudes coursing through the veins. Not so the recent task force report to the UC Regents.  

The report as a whole is one of the most thoughtful statements on intolerance, including anti-Semitism, to appear from any university leaders. Members of the task force demonstrate a firm grasp of the dispiriting anti-Semitic events that have occurred on too many University of California campuses, including malicious vandalism, inappropriate challenges to Jewish students vying for student government offices, outright expressions of anti-Semitic claims and narratives, and threats to the physical safety of persons. The authors say forthrightly that “Anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination have no place in the University.”

Some fear censorship and the muzzling of speakers if the report is adopted by the full board. Not true. The report firmly and clearly embraces the values of academic freedom and freedom of expression. It emphasizes: “First Amendment principles and academic freedom principles must be paramount in guiding the University’s response to instances of bias, prejudice and intolerance and its efforts to create and maintain an equal campus learning environment for all.”  Adopting the report would not impose restrictions on teaching, campus debate, research, and First Amendment rights, as some have suggested.  

But the legal protection of speech does not obviate the responsibility by university leaders to challenge intolerant speech in all its malignant forms when it appears.  Above all, the role of a university is to educate and expand knowledge. We should celebrate university leaders who oppose racist, sexist, genderist, Islamophobic, and other forms of spoken or written intolerance with their own clear and reasoned words.   University leaders are to set moral tones for their campuses, affirm academic freedom and free expression, and support values of intellectual pluralism and robust and open exchanges of views. 

We appreciate that criticism of Israeli policies is not per se anti-Semitic. There are forms of anti-Zionism that should not be understood as anti-Semitic in origin or in thrust or consequence.  Questions about (and critical consideration of) the Israel-Palestine conflict, its origins, history, dynamics, and current realities and prospects must continue to be important matters attended to on campuses. 

But when anti-Zionism is couched in a language of stereotypes and offensive narratives, when a demonizing discourse claims about the Jewish state what classic anti-Semites earlier claimed about the Jews, we witness an updated form of an old intolerance — what some scholars call “the new antisemitism.”  This discourse is demeaning and damaging, underwrites a single-minded assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state, morally disparages those tied to or supportive of that state, and stirs currents of speech and action with real consequences for lives on campuses.

We commend the task force for its work and respectfully urge the full Board of Regents to adopt its report.

Mr. Yudof is President Emeritus of the University of California; Mr. Waltzer is Professor Emeritus of History, Michigan State University. They lead the Academic Engagement Network.