The US House Judiciary
Committee on Tuesday heard testimony about increased antisemitism on US
college campuses, as lawmakers mulled advancing a 2016 bill that would require
the Department of Education to adopt the State Department’s
working definition of antisemitism.
The
Antisemitism Awareness Act (ASAA) would require federally funded
education programs to employ the State Department’s standards in assessing
whether civil rights laws have been violated when dealing with hate crimes.
The controversy over the legislation stems from its
provisions regarding Israel. The ASAA would ban the Department of Education
from “claiming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions” and
“applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or
demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Opponents of the legislation argue the clauses on Israel
would infringe free speech on campus.
“It is undeniable
that some anti-Israel sentiment is fueled by hostility toward Jews,” Suzanne
Nossel, executive director of PEN America said in her testimony Tuesday. “But
to declare, ipso facto, that any speech that blames Israel for regional
tensions or subjects Israel to a higher standard of behavior constitutes
anti-Semitism risks chilling a wide range of speech.”
Johnathan Greenblatt, who heads the Anti-Defamation League,
said his organization has tracked a substantial spike in anti-Semitic incidents
on campuses — a total of 118 in the first three quarters of 2017 — and yet many
of these incidents “would not meet the criteria to be categorized as a hate
crime.”
He pointed to a recent incident at Princeton University in
which a Jewish student was berated over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians,
while the university newspaper published a cartoon of Alan Dershowitz that
Greenblatt said “invoked a time-worn and ant-Semitic trope of the bloodthirsty
Jew.”
Greenblatt endorsed the legislation, saying it would help
ensure Jewish students “remain safe on campus while at the same time protecting
the free speech rights of all students.”
Others, like Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish
Committee, and Sandra Hagee Parker of Christians United for Israel, also spoke
in support of the measure, while Barry Trachtenberg, who directs the Jewish
Studies Program at Wake Forest University spoke against it.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia,
said it was with a “spirit of welcoming all perspectives” that he convened the
hearing.
It is not yet clear when the House Judiciary Committee will
vote on whether to send the legislation to the entire chamber.
