“Threats, harassment, and grading discrimination—Jewish students in the U.S. are increasingly plagued by incidents of anti-Jewish sentiment on campuses, coming from both pro-Palestine Arab organizations and lecturers,” asserted journalist Dudi Caspi.

In an address at morning prayers in September 2002, then-Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers added his concern about unfair criticism of Israel: “Certainly there is much to be debated about the Middle East and much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged. But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

Summers continued, “And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the university to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested.”

Judith Butler, professor in rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and a supporter of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), took issue with Summers in the London Review of Books: “When the president of Harvard University declared that to criticize Israel … and to call on universities to divest from Israel are ‘actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intentm’ he introduced a distinction between effective and intentional anti-Semitism that is controversial at best. The counter charge has been that in making his statement, Summers has struck a blow against academic freedom, in effect, if not in intent.

“Although he insisted that he meant nothing censorious by his remarks, and that he is in favor of Israeli policy being ‘debated freely and civilly,’ his words have had a chilling effect on political discourse. Among those actions which he called ‘effectively anti-Semitic’ were European boycotts of Israel.”

British sociologist David Hirsh responded that “Butler clearly implies that it is necessary to demonstrate intent or bad faith in order legitimately to raise the issue of anti-Semitism. … Butler conflates attempts to mobilize an exclusion of Israeli scholars (and only Israeli scholars) from the academic community, the ‘boycott’ with free and civil debate. This is a conflation which Summers explicitly avoids when he makes the distinction between freedom of speech in debates around Israeli policy on the one hand, and other things, such as the ‘boycott,’ on the other.

“Having taken a strong position against the possibility of anti-Semitism ‘in effect but not in intent,’ and having implied that this formulation has a damaging and ‘chilling’ effect, she proceeds to take up this same ‘in effect but not intent’ position in relation to freedom of speech. Although she writes, Summers clearly ‘insisted’ that he is for freedom of speech, and he clearly makes a distinction between speech and boycott (which he thinks is anti-semitic), she claims that his analysis is objectively anti-freedom of speech, in spite of his lack of intent and in spite of his insistent denial. Butler dismisses the possibility of anti-Semitism without intent, but she allows the possibility of closing down the right to criticize, without intent.” Put in simpler terms, it is “my way or the highway.”

In an address to the Ottawa Conference on Combatting Anti-Semitism, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged that “anti-Semitism has gained a place at our universities, where at times it is not the mob who are removed, but the Jewish students under attack. And, under the shadow of a hateful ideology with global ambitions, one which targets the Jewish homeland as a scapegoat, Jews are savagely attacked around the world, such as, most appallingly, in Mumbai in 2008. … Harnessing disparate anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Western ideologies, it targets the Jewish people by targeting the Jewish homeland, Israel, as the source of injustice and conflict in the world, and uses, perversely, the language of human rights to do so.

“Israel, like any country, may be subjected to fair criticism,” Harper said. Criticism is part of any democratic debate, “But when Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.”

He added that Canada supports Israel “not just because it is the right thing to do, which is it, but also because history shows us, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are ultimately a threat to all of us. Indeed, if you look at the terrorist threats Israel faces, they are of the same ideological origins as those who threaten terrorism against Canada. The only difference between the threats against us and the threats against Israel is that these threats are more numerous and closer to Israel.”

A Final Note

For British historian Norman Geras, the idea that anti-Semitism has become respectable not just among the “thugs,” but “pervasively also within polite society … and within the perimeters of a self-flattering liberal and left opinion … is a moral scandal.” Should a new catastrophe befall world Jewry, he is convinced there will once again be those who plan and orchestrate the calamity and those who “collaborate, collude” and avert their eyes and justify their actions in writings. “Some of these, dismayingly, shamefully, will be of the left.” The State of Israel “has been made an alibi for a new climate of anti-Semitism on the left.”

There is no other conclusion, he says, which is why it is imperative to understand the nature of the threat. “The daunting challenge we face is that the beliefs we are combating provide profound emotional gratification to those who embrace them, gratification that is not simple to surmount or to supplant, but no less dangerous for its liberal patina.”

Dr. Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.