February 21, 2024
[Note: I delivered a much-abbreviated, three-minute version of the prepared comments below in testimony before the Education Committee of the Indiana State Senate on February 21, 2024. The comments were first drafted in opposition to an early version of House Bill 1002, a law about non-discrimination in public education that focused on “antisemitism” and explicitly incorporated the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition, which basically conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The version of the bill that ultimately was passed unanimously by the Senate committee struck all such language from the bill. The comments below critique the basic idea behind the bill, including the language removed by the committee—language that still might resurface during reconciliation between House and Senate bills.]
My name is Jeff Isaac. I am a James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where I have taught for the past 37 years.
I teach about democracy and human rights, and about war, totalitarianism, genocide, and the Holocaust.
I am a Jewish American, and I have family and friends who live in Israel–though I have never been there.
I was one of the founding members of a human rights coalition called Bloomington United, formed in 1999 in response to neo-Nazi leafleting of the community. I have long worked against all forms of bigotry. Between the years 1999 and 2004, I served as the volunteer security guard at Congregation Beth Shalom. I stood guard every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning while the synagogue’s children–including the children of someone testifying here today in favor of the restrictions I oppose–were inside attending Hebrew School. I also organized security for High Holy Days, working with friends at the Bloomington Police Department. During that time, I worked closely on security issues with the BPD and was sometimes in contact with the FBI as well.
I know antisemitism when I see it. And it does not want to see me. It is my enemy. I fight my enemies.
I strongly oppose the IHRA language. But not because I am any kind of “anti-Zionist.” For many years I was the unofficial Bloomington “representative” of Americans for Peace Now—Peace Now is a liberal Zionist Israeli peace group, formed by Israeli military officers in 1978, that supports a two-state solution. I no longer affiliate with the group, for a number of reasons. My views about Zionism are complicated. But they have no bearing on the matter at hand.
I am not a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, because I disagree with some of the group’s rhetoric and policy positions. But I share with my colleagues in that group a desire for an end to destructive war and an uncompromising opposition to all forms of bigotry, including but not limited to antisemitism. For the same reason, I am an avid supporter of constitutional democracy, a system that flourishes because it allows maximum freedom of citizens to disagree and to argue, to be smart or stupid, and to be congenial or offensive—so long as what is said and done is short of violence and the threat of violence, and within the bounds of the law.
And that is why I oppose the language in HB/SB1002 that incorporates the IHRA definition of antisemitism–and why I would expect many Republicans here, if they are serious about liberty, to oppose it as well.
The law’s commitment to antidiscrimination is laudatory. I believe that this commitment should govern public education at all levels in this state, and I believe that it does, though not perfectly—perfection is a pretty high standard.
The current war in the Middle East has generated intense disagreement. In my view most of this disagreement—about Israel, about Hamas, about Palestine—is not about racism or religion or ethnicity or “hate,” it is about politics, the politics of national identity and territory and histories of injury and current fears and sufferings. And right now, much of this controversy centers on an Israeli military campaign of destruction, displacement, and mass killing that far exceeds the despicable violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.
There are people who claim that Israel is an illegitimate state. I disagree with them (to be more precise, I disagree that the state itself, now doing terrible things that I oppose, has a mark against it that distinguishes it from all states, none of which are founded in pure justice). If the anti-Zionists are Palestinian, I also understand why they might think differently than I do. But whether I agree or disagree, whether I am offended or heartened, the holders of such views do not threaten me, my children, or my family and friends who are Jewish. I do not fear them. I cry out for no special protection. And I regard their opposition to Zionism primarily as a political challenge for Israel, which not my country, to find a proper resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the kind of recognition of Palestinians that has long been denied and that is currently being travestied.
There is a difference between disagreeing with what someone says or supports; being offended, even deeply, by it; and being victimized or literally harmed by it. Words can metaphorically “wound.” But the wounding is metaphorical, at least if we are being serious about freedom of expression. There has been much “cutting” rhetoric since October 7 on the campus of Indiana University. But no violence and no actual lacerations. This matters.
There are people who think that communist China is an illegitimate state. I do. I’ll bet most of you do. Does this make you an anti-Chinese racist who seeks the elimination of the Chinese people?
No.
Disagreeing about political legitimacy in this country has a distinguished lineage, going back to the Declaration of Independence.
And arguments about the legitimacy of Israel are not arguments about “Jews.” They are arguments about a particular state that claims to somehow “represent” all Jews everywhere and forever while in fact doing a very poor job of representing its own Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, much less the millions of disenfranchised Palestinians over which it rules.
There has always been antisemitism in Southern Indiana. I’ve experienced it, in its malevolent forms, and its more benign forms—as when students talk about “Jewing people down.” We deal with it. When it becomes threatening or violent, it is against the law, on campus and in the society.
Every instance of campus antisemitism that really is antisemitic and bigoted—explicit threats against Jewish students, swastika vandalism, the use of explicitly antisemitic terms of abuse to intimidate or harass individuals, tearing off yarmulkes—is already against campus rules on every campus in the state of Indiana and, when violent, it is against the law as well. The awful incident at Cornell last year involving violent threats to Jewish students—campus authorities, local law enforcement, and the FBI handled it fine, arresting suspects and arraigning them for prosecution and trial.
They did not need to explicitly incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s controversial view that anti-Zionism is antisemitism into state law in order to deal with such hostile and bigoted acts. And we do not need such legislation here in Indiana.
The adoption of this definition serves only one purpose, and it is not to oppose harmful bigotry against Jews; it is to define criticism of Israel as harmful bigotry against Jews as such–which is exactly why the supporters of this adoption are so adamant about it.
And this is wrong.
The definition is not as “universal” as some have said. It has been challenged by hundreds of scholars of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Israel–mainly Jewish scholars—in two very well-known documents, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and the Nexus Document on Antisemitism—and I’ve brought copies of both to share with you.
The principal drafter of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, just published an op ed in the Boston Globe last week entitled “I wrote a definition of antisemitism. It was never meant to chill free speech on campus.” In it he explains why the many examples linked to that definition were never intended to serve a legal purpose, and why “Everyone on a campus has the right to use their free speech rights to counter expressions they find hateful. Asking the state to suppress disfavored ideas, especially on campuses, is never acceptable.”
Many of you oppose campus speech codes as they apply to questions of gender and race. I share the view that universities need to do a better job of protecting freedom of speech across campus, and of resisting claims of this or that group that words that they don’t like are forms of violence. Whether students are Black or Jewish or gay or whatever, threats and attacks against such people—any people– must be off limits, but arguments about public policies people don’t like must not be off limits.
But that is exactly what the original language of the proposed bill does. It says that words that some Jews don’t like —and yes, unfortunately almost every major American Jewish organization is in this category– are antisemitic, even if other Jews use those very words. And it treats arguable and sometimes offensive political opinions–at least to some– about world politics uttered in this democratic country as if they are being uttered by Nazis in Germany in 1933 (my own department has received messages from people denouncing me as a dangerous “antisemite” who supports Hamas terrorism, and demanding my firing—because I have defended the academic freedom of pro-Palestinian activists!).
This hysteria about imminent danger is crazy, and it is indeed insulting to me as a college professor, as a citizen of a constitutional republic, and as a Jew.
Limiting political expression on the basis of hyped-up fear violates cherished values of free speech.
It does nothing to make any form of bigotry or violence any more punishable than it already is.
But it does establish an exception for the state of Israel which would be inconceivable were it applied to any other country in the world: the idea that certain forms of criticism of this state are simply out of bounds.
The original language of the bill says that it is antisemitic to be more critical of Israel than one might be of other states.
But what if you are a U.S. citizen who notices that Israel receives more aid from the U.S. than any other state, and you spend more time criticizing Israel than, say, Venezuela, because you are helping to foot the Israeli bill? That makes you an antisemite?
And what if you are an Arab-American or Palestinian-American citizen who spends more time criticizing Israel than Tunisia because your family does not experience Israel as a form of deliverance and empowerment? Is it antisemitic for Palestinian students on campus who have family experiencing human rights abuse right now in Jenin or Ramallah, or being bombed in Gaza, to criticize Israel and not communist China or Cuba or Zimbabwe? Really?
There has been much acrimony on the campus of Indiana University. Many individual Jewish or Arab students or faculty might feel offended. But there has been no violence.
And yet the logic of IHRA has begun to take its toll on academic freedom. Following a letter from Congressman Jim Banks, the IU administration has moved to bring to heel the student-run Palestine Solidarity Committee on the grounds that its pro-Palestinian efforts are antisemitic. The group’s faculty adviser, my colleague and friend Abdulkader Sinno, was then suspended on trumped-up charges. The suspension violated university due process and long-standing norms of faculty governance, and served no good purpose—though it has served the bad purpose of chilling speech on campus. It has been denounced by a wide range of groups from the ACLU and the AAUP to the libertarian group FIRE—Foundation for Individual Rights of Expression. Over four hundred faculty members, including 37 members of the Distinguished Faculty Alliance, have objected. (The administration’s cancellation of a long-planned art exhibit by Palestinian artist Samia Halaby has followed a similar script and received even more public condemnation.)
No Jewish student has been harmed by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (some even work with and support it), though many Jewish students have been offended and angered by the group’s activism, and have responded in kind—as is their right in a pluralistic society.
I’ve met these Palestinian students. They are bright, impressive, well-meaning young people who care about the world. We have talked. They shook my hand as they saw the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism, hanging from my neck. I shared my experience and was honest about my support but also about the ways I disagree with them. They shared with me their own experiences and views. They are not antisemitic and they threaten no one. Perhaps if those leading the charge against them actually deigned to talk with them instead of denouncing them, they might discover this. The idea that these Arab and Arab-American young people ought to think and talk about Israel the way Jewish kids from Indianapolis or New York do is worse than foolish. It arrogant and it is downright stupid. And yet this is exactly what the group’s right-wing Zionist opponents are demanding.
Again, there is a huge moral, legal, and constitutional difference between offense on the one hand, and violence or actual harm on the other.
If there is any place where these differences should matter, it is here.
You should support laws that promote non-discrimination and intellectual freedom in education.
But do not support laws that needlessly and unjustifiably chill the freedom of expression that is at the heart of the educational process, a process whereby young people learn how to think and speak for themselves and to share a world with others who think and speak differently.
Public education must never place the hurt feelings of any group above the free inquiry, serious debate, and sometimes fractious argument that is the hallmark of a democratic society.
Democracy in Dark Times 