Should anti-Semitism on campus be tolerated?

These are the notes for my introduction to the debate on anti-Semitism on campus: ban it or tolerate it? at the Battle of Ideas today.

Should anti-Semitism on campus be banned or tolerated?

I don’t think it makes sense to treat that question in an undifferentiated way. It depends on exactly what you’re talking about.

For example, if you’re referring to speech alone then I think it should be tolerated. If you are referring to violence it should be severely punished. Or are you talking about anti-Semitism as a political force?

I’ll quickly take each in turn.

In terms of anti-Semitism as speech I believe it should be given the maximum possible leeway. The essence of a free society is that people should be able to say what they think – even if their views are ludicrous or deemed offensive. It should not be up to others to tell us what we can say or ultimately what we can think.

If people want to say the world is controlled by an international Jewish conspiracy – clearly an absurd argument – they should be free to say that. If they want to argue that Israel is a uniquely evil country – in my view a blatantly anti-Semitic view – they should be free to say that.

I would only draw the line when it is clearly becoming incitement to violence. For example, going into a Jewish area and chanting “kill the Jews”.

Certainly if someone threatens to kill or rape someone because they are Jewish that seems to me unacceptable. For example, such threats were made against the Jewish chaplain and his wife at Leeds university. Those who make such threats should face the full force of the law. Also of course if someone engages in physical assault against Jews – as has happened, for example, at Exeter university – I believe they should face severe punishment under the law.

As a subsidiary point I don’t think students have an unlimited right to disruption. I noticed recently, for instance, that Greta Thunberg, the famous environmental activist, recently attacked the German police for taking down an encampment after four months at the University of Dortmund. She is fully entitled to express her views but free speech does not mean unlimited licence to disrupt university life.

Finally, and I hope it’s not forgotten in this discussion, there is anti-Semitism as a political force. That is at root the idea that the Jews represent the personification of evil.

In that context, we shouldn’t forget that students who engage in anti-Semitic activity at protest encampments are often following what their lecturers teach them. They have absorbed the precepts of critical social justice and post-colonial theory. They all too often believe that Jews are the ultimate personifications of white privilege. And that Israel – the Jewish state – is the ultimate personification of the evil of colonialism. “Decolonisation” in this context can all too often be taken to mean support for the slaughter of Jews.

In my view we need to fight an unremitting political battle against such ideas. Even when they are not explicitly anti-Semitic – although they increasingly are – it is all too easy to draw anti-Semitic conclusions from them.

But this in a way takes us back to the beginning again. To fight that battle against anti-Semitic ideas we need free speech. It is much easier to challenge bad ideas when they are expressed openly.

So my conclusions are:

Yes, to the toleration of the expression of anti-Semitic ideas.

Absolutely not, to anti-Semitic violence.

Yes, to an unremitting political battle against anti-Semitism.