Recent unfortunate events, however, skew the concept. Last month, Israel’s ambassador to the United States was heckled and interrupted 10 times during a speech at the University of California, Irvine. After the fourth interruption, Oren left the stage for 20 minutes while university officials admonished protestors for their behavior.
Eleven protestors were arrested and, according to UCI’s dean of the law school Erwin Chereminsky, the students among them will face disciplinary measures.
UCI Chancellor Michael Drake and event moderator Mark Petracca, chair of the school’s political science department, told the wire service JTA that they were embarrassed on behalf of the university.
The Feb. 8 event was quickly spun into an epic tale of noble truth-telling advocates being denied their freedom of speech by the powerful Israel lobby. One UCI professor compared the response to Oren’s speech to that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s speech at Columbia University. Ridiculous.
The Jewish community’s response was equally rapid.
Commending the arrests and removal of the protestors, Shalom Elcott, president and chief executive of Jewish Federation of Orange County, which helped fund the event, called for public funding to be withheld from the Muslim Student Union’s programs.
Citing years-long problems with the university, the New York-based Zionist Organization of America called for donors to stop supporting the school and for students to stop enrolling there.
The national pro-Israel organization, Stand With Us, agreed that the issue revolves around the right of free speech but asserted that the rights in question are Oren’s.
The truth, of course, is much more nuanced.
The leaders of five Jewish student organizations at UCI set the right tone in their open letter denouncing the ZOA directive. “[W]e believe the best response to their hateful speakers and programs is to be proactive by engaging in positive dialogue and peace-seeking efforts….
“As students on this campus, we feel that one of the best ways to send a message to the MSU is to increase the attendance of students who will speak out against them and stand up for American principles such as freedom of speech.”
It’s true. The best way to combat hate speech is by developing relationships and creating opportunities for more speech. Nothing else works.
The organized Jewish community generally uses two tactics to keep controversial figures away from our cities and campuses — statements of condemnation and the quiet exertion of political power on institutions to… well… reconsider.
Such wrangling happens within the Jewish community too. Recently, in Philadelphia, several pro-Israel activists protested the University of Pennsylvania’s Hillel chapter’s decision to host an event organized by J Street, the young organization that calls itself “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro peace movement.”
Ironically, in Pittsburgh, J Street supporters launched a campaign to stop the Hillel Jewish University Center from hosting Israeli hard-liner Effi Eitam.
Though such steps may indeed keep some distasteful characters off campuses, they do nothing to encourage activists to develop the tools necessary for productive civil discourse. What’s really missing from our discussions about free speech is not boycotts or guerilla tactics or more rage but the simple idea of civility.
Civility is the quieter, less glamorous twin sister of free speech and advocacy. She is the secret weapon among those who make real progress and, as tempers flare and indignation grows, she often withdraws from the room. In conversations about Israel, she is usually nowhere to be seen.
Being civil means engaging rather than discrediting, arguing with equal measures of passion and respect, choosing our words carefully and then … pausing to listen.
Coming just days after the arrests in Irvine, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs devoted its annual plenum, held Feb. 20-23, to the theme of civility. In an opinion article printed Feb. 22 in the Dallas Morning News, the organization’s executive director, Rabbi Steve Gutow, and its chair, Andrea Weinstein, wrote “Enough is enough.”
“As a group, we must learn to model civility in our everyday behavior. We must never hesitate to stand up and condemn acts of demonization and defamation,” they wrote.
“We must educate ourselves and each other about the consequences of disrespectful behavior, and on an institutional level, develop resources on conflict resolution and respectful communication.”
The pair called for an initiative that “will send community leaders into our schools, workplaces and congregations, in our own faith communities as well as others, and work with one another to define a code of civility, create a system of checks and balances to alert others when that line has been crossed, and to generate appropriate and public responses for when one continually crosses that line.”
The protestors in Irvine and others who would like to silence opinions that are distasteful to them would be well served not just to research the First Amendment and cry “Injustice!” but to study the notion of civility. If progress and justice are our goals, then civility and respect cannot be overlooked.
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