mccarthyism

Evidencing America’s profound moral depravity is the targeting of campus protesters rather than the genocidal actions of America’s closest ally Israel. President Donald Trump, members of Congress, Christian and Jewish nationalists, and university task forces on antisemitism all charge campus protesters with widespread antisemitism through singling out and demonizing Israel. Ominously, these accusations have prompted universities to impose far-reaching restrictions on campus speech and assembly which match or exceed the crackdowns of the McCarthy era. Consequently, while Israel’s genocide endures, to the silence or approval of leading political, media, and university leaders, it is the protesters who have been substantially silenced.

Granted, within the surge of campus protests in 2023-2024, a few protesters crossed the line into crude antisemitism or other offensive behavior. The partisan university task force reports on antisemitism at places like Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA have seized upon these scattered instances and lumped them with controversial but defensible chants, such as “Globalize the intifada,” to paint a manufactured picture of rampant hostility toward Jews. Conveniently, neither the task forces nor university officials address the cause of these protests: the ongoing destruction of Gaza, judged to be genocide by Amnesty International and other human rights groups, and the complicity of many U.S. universities. To illustrate this moral myopia, I review a recent tempest at UC San Diego.