Friday, April 22, 2016

The Stanford Anti-Semitism Experiment, Part 3

Stanford's student council has unanimously passed its resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Now, one can always be skeptical of these resolutions -- as a student in the UK noted, they can come off as box-checking rather than a genuine attempt to grapple with the injustice -- but on my read of the text it is strong enough. The decision to not just mandate yearly anti-Semitism training, but enlist the ADL to assist in the project, is particularly welcome. The decision to recognize "the collective rights to self-determination of the Jewish people that are no different than any other people" is also very good.

There was nothing in there that directly or indirectly tackled the blood libel or the propensity to promulgate such conspiracies, which is a shame given that this apparently holds appeal to at least one Stanford professor, but I suppose that was a long-shot. While there was no specific mention of the comments by a Stanford senator earlier regarding the legitimacy of debating "Jewish power", he had already been censured by the senate and the resolution preserves the language he objected to condemning "the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions."

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