Randall Kennedy on Harvard Protests, Antisemitism, and the Meaning of Free Speech
The New Yorker
harvard, gaza, palestine, israel, protests, audio
“The word ‘safety,’ ” the legal scholar tells David Remnick, has “been very much inflated,” and defining antisemitism too broadly will have a chilling effect on academic freedom.

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In December, the presidents of three universities were summoned to Congress for hearings about whether a climate of antisemitism exists on campuses. Politicians like Elise Stefanik made headlines, and two of the presidents, including Harvard’s Claudine Gay, were soon out of their posts. The Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote an essay for the London Review of Books about the reverberations of those events. “Folks were out to get Claudine Gay from the get-go,” he thinks, “and were going to use any openings with which to do that”—for reasons that had little to do with protecting Jews. Kennedy tells David Remnick about a lawsuit against Harvard that would equate opposition to Zionism with antisemitism, and render a range of thinkers (including many Jews) unteachable. And “this,” Kennedy asserts, “is very dangerous.”

This segment is part of the New Yorker Radio Hour’s episode devoted to the protests and the speech issues that college campuses have raised.
“The word ‘safety,’ ” the legal scholar tells David Remnick, has “been very much inflated,” and defining antisemitism too broadly will have a chilling effect on academic freedom.
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our twice-weekly News & Politics newsletter. In December, the presidents of three universities were summoned to Congress for hearings about whether a climate of antisemitism exists on campuses. Politicians like Elise Stefanik made headlines, and two of the presidents, including Harvard’s Claudine Gay, were soon out of their posts. The Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote an essay for the London Review of Books about the reverberations of those events. “Folks were out to get Claudine Gay from the get-go,” he thinks, “and were going to use any openings with which to do that”—for reasons that had little to do with protecting Jews. Kennedy tells David Remnick about a lawsuit against Harvard that would equate opposition to Zionism with antisemitism, and render a range of thinkers (including many Jews) unteachable. And “this,” Kennedy asserts, “is very dangerous.” This segment is part of the New Yorker Radio Hour’s episode devoted to the protests and the speech issues that college campuses have raised.