No Harm Spilt

(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

The regents of the University of California have spoken and has voted unanimously to adopt its working group’s “Principles Against Intolerance.” As I wrote last week, it is a report that dangerously conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in ways that make the report muddled, unenforceable, and a very real threat to the free speech of pro-Palestinian student groups on campus.

While most of the public debate over this report has focused on the challenge of balancing the UC’s desire to combat intolerance with the need to protect freedom of speech, it seems to me that one critical aspect of this issue has gone largely unaddressed: the fact that this report which purports to address the issue of intolerance on campus frames the issue almost exclusively in terms of anti-Semitism.

To be sure, if this report was intended to be a comprehensive statement on intolerance, wouldn’t…