Prof. Mohammad Fadel recently published a defense of nine Berkeley student organizations’ ban on “Zionist speakers,” which was a response to my own essay last week. The Chronicle of Higher Education offered me the last word, which was published yesterday.
Here is the gist:
Yes, Berkeley Is Silencing Jews
By Steven Lubet
OCTOBER 24, 2022
It not unusual for student organizations to pass resolutions critical of, or even hostile to, Israel, but nine law-student groups at the University of California at Berkeley broke radical new ground when they adopted a bylaw banning all speakers who hold pro-Israel views, regardless of the topics they would address.
Mohammad Fadel of the University of Toronto presented an eloquent defense of the Berkeley students, also in these pages, but only by omitting the actual language of the resolution, as well as the students’ rationale for it, in favor of his own cleaned-up and more politically palatable version.
Fadel characterizes the prohibition as applying to “speakers who are rabidly anti-Palestinian.” In fact, the Berkeley bylaw is so excessive that it would prohibit mainstream speakers of all backgrounds from addressing any of the nine signatory organizations on topics entirely unrelated to the Middle East. Justice Elena Kagan could not speak to the Women of Berkeley Law on issues before the Supreme Court; Vice President Kamala Harris could not tell the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association of her childhood in Berkeley; Sen. Tammy Baldwin could not speak to the Queer Caucus about her experience as the first openly lesbian senator; and even President Barack Obama would be barred from addressing the Law Students of African Descent.
The great irony is that Fadel closes his essay with a quote from the late Edward Said, calling upon Jewish Americans to declare themselves “for the joint, politically equal survival of two peoples.” Anyone heeding Said’s admonition today — advocating the political independence of both Israelis and Palestinians — would be prohibited from speaking on that subject, or any other, to nine law-student organizations in Berkeley.
You can read the entire essay at Chronicle of Higher Education (paywalled with free registration).
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