In an article in the Stanford Political Journal, Israel’s former deputy ambassador to Norway explains that the Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) campaigns are not about criticizing Israel but demonizing and dehumanizing it. While there are important political issues to discuss, BDS instead abuses the human rights discourse by using a simplistic “good v. evil” narrative that is not always based in truth or fact.
I’m mixing here two Rogers and Hammerstein musicals: “Oklahoma” and “South Pacific.” The bottom line is the University of Oklahoma President David Boren has expelled two student fraternity leaders for responsibility for the following videorecorded racist chant: There will never be a n*gger at SAE There will never be a n*gger at SAE You can hang him from a tree But he’ll never sign with me There will never be a n*gger at SAE. His rationale: the chant, for which they bear responsibility, created “a hostile learning environment.” If his reasoning is correct, don’t inflammatory anti-Israel, anti-Jewish chants, posters, and cartoons, no less disruptive demonstrations, create a similar “hostile learning environment” violating the terms of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and demanding immediate university action or, failing that, intervention by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR)? The caveat is that there are 20 years of court rulings raising a high bar on free speech ground for punishing students for even the most offensive utterances. Presumably, if the expelled student leaders sue, Boren will have to show a convincing nexus between the chant, the positions held by the student frat leaders, and the likely and predictable impact on African American students, probably as individuals and not just an abstract category. See Eugene Volkh in the “Washington Post”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/10/no-a-public-university-may-not-expel-students-for-racist-speech/