Sarai Navot is concerned about the safety of Jewish communities in America.

Navot said the surfacing of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement at about 15 colleges nationwide is a trend that promotes anti-Semitism. BDS is an international campaign created to pressure Israel into ending their occupation of Palestinian land, ultimately granting them equality.

Navot, a fourth-year law and government student at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, visited Syracuse University with several other students for the past few weeks as part of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Executive Education Program.

At SU, Navot said she felt accepted. SU has a zero-tolerance policy toward hate speech and with 16 percent of its undergraduate population being Jewish, it has one of the top 60 Jewish populations in the nation, according to Hillel International’s website.

But some colleges are at a crossroads between preserving free speech and ensuring that Israeli Jewish students feel safe.

The University of California is facing pressure from students, alumni, trustees and, allegedly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), to adopt the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism into the UC system. If the definition — which applies specifically to criticisms of Israel — were to be adopted at UC, members of the university’s governing board of regents may consider suspending or expelling students in violation of it.

Some critics claim the definition limits academic freedom on college campuses, while others say the definition protects the university community from being subjected to hate speech.

SU faced a similar debate last fall when University Senators Mark Rupert and Margaret Susan Thompson introduced an academic freedom resolution to the University Senate. The resolution concerned the firing of Steven Salaita, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who lost his job after tweeting controversial thoughts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The resolution sought to uphold faculty governance in issues of hiring and firing, said Rupert, who is a political science professor.

After extensive discussion, Rupert said in an email that the resolution was abandoned. The conflict lied in preserving free speech among faculty members and making sure SU didn’t appear that it was condoning hate speech, he said.

It was that kind of language that Miriam Elman, an associate professor of political science, said Jewish students need to be protected from at SU. The university is generally welcoming to pro-Israel advocates, she said.

But problems arose last year when a speaker who compared Israel to Nazi Germany was scheduled to speak at SU on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Elman said, so she and other professors tried to get the university to reschedule his talk for another time. The request was denied on the grounds of academic freedom, Elman said.

While Elman said she promotes studying diverse ideas, she added that universities must be mindful of how they’re presenting them.

“I can see the value in studying them, but I don’t see the value in giving them a podium,” Elman said. “I don’t want to work in a place like that, where any bigot can come in and speak.”

The State Department definition could be a valuable guide for universities when they look at anti-Semitism, Elman said, because it suggests there are ways in which the demonization of Jews is starting to be applied to Israel and Israelis.

But Rupert said he believes the definition may incorrectly draw a parallel between political criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitic hate speech. The end result could be a stale, one-sided conversation about global policy.

Above that, Rupert said, it could limit free speech on college campuses.

“I fear that using the State Department guidelines would have a chilling effect on important public debates that ought to be happening on American campuses,” Rupert said.

SU was not immediately available at press time to answer if the university would consider adopting the State Department definition.

Published on October 12, 2015 at 10:18 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu