3,188 words

Cary Nelson is a very smart man. He is an emeritus English professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne and was the president of the American Association of University Professors from 2006 to 2012. As much as anybody else writing about higher education today, he grasps the hair-splitting nuances of academic freedom. He knows where to delineate the boundaries between expressions that deserves protection and those that should be subject to professional or administrative control.

But Nelson also appears to be a devious man who drops his pretense of objectivity in order to forward his political agendas. For Nelson is a man of the far left; he openly describes himself as a communist, proudly declaring his intent to promote “Marxism without guarantees”[1] and wrote an autobiography titled Manifesto of a Tenured Radical.

Yet his Marxism is secondary to his other agenda: he is also an ardent Zionist and defender of Israel and Jewry. In his latest book, Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles, Nelson’s main interest is not finding the best rules by which to conduct the objective searche for truth. Rather, he uses the complexity of academic freedom to provide cover for his political goals. He rails at how anti-Zionist activists try to hide behind academic freedom to attack Israel and Jews, while at the same time proposing no protections against similar attacks on whites.

Hate Speech and Academic Freedom has received fawning praise throughout academia and the media. It has also received equally positive treatment by the conservative think tank world, where one reviewer called Nelson’s effort “a desperately needed book” and ignored Nelson’s opinions that are anti-conservative, such as his concerns about “hate speech directed at Jewish businessman and philanthropist George Soros.”[2] With support from many key sectors, Nelson’s ideas concerning academic freedom and “antisemitism” are likely to have considerable influence.

Academic freedom, which is the protection afforded to intellectuals to pursue truth wherever the facts and logic may lead, is an elusive concept. Many observations that seem obvious at first prove to be wrong under closer inspection. To get definitions and violations correct requires extensive legalistic parsing of potential human actions and incentives. It is also easily conflated with the related concept of free speech, yet they are fundamentally different: free speech is a legal right whereas academic freedom is a privilege conferred upon employment.

Even many academics who have examined the idea for much of their careers don’t get it right. A common error is that professional consensus sets the boundaries for intellectual exploration. But protecting thought that is outside the current consensus is the very reason why it is necessary to have academic freedom in the first place.

Nelson acknowledges that academic freedom’s higher purpose is supporting “the pursuit of the truth by preventing faculty members who voice unorthodox and controversial opinions from being sanctioned.”[3] But while he rejects the consensus when it is anti-Zionist and recommends that academic departments that adopt an anti-Zionist consensus have their hiring rights removed[4]—he supports it to limit the expression of ideas he doesn’t like.

Defending Zionism in academia is not as easy as it once was. When Nelson began his career in the 1960s, it was still commonly assumed that Jews belonged among the dispossessed and discriminated-against peoples favored by the left. But world opinion has shifted to reflect actual Jewish power; today they are considered to be part of the Western elite, often lumped together with European whites or described as “colonists” who exploit or harm third-world populations.

Still, this reversal of Jewish status is not an insurmountable problem for Nelson; there is no reason to be intellectually consistent when you’ve got bigger goals in mind.

To be clear, the ’hate speech” in the book’s title is not meant in a general sense, but only when directed at “antisemitism,” which is succinctly described as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Antisemitism deserves a special status all its own, according to Nelson: it is “the longest hatred,”[5] and he favors European or Canadian “hate speech” legislation to protect against it.[6] Academic units with virulently anti-white majorities abound in the Ivory Tower, but Nelson makes no mention of them. Rather, he indicates his approval.

While many of Nelson’s criticisms of the current wave of attacks on account of the Palestinian question are sensible—the pro-Palestinian side is also very capable of misleading propaganda and false accusations—there is also an alarming dismissal of open questions in that area as well. He dismisses much serious criticism of Zionism as “conspiracy theories,” relying on the work of British Zionist lawyer Julius Anthony, who claims that antisemitic conspiracy theories:

. . . are all iterations of the one thesis: The Jews are a malign collective, acting in their own interests and to the detriment of the non-Jewish world. That is to say: antisemitism is one giant meta-conspiracy theory.[7]

This is a superficial view of group dynamics, ignoring the possibility that, rather than some organized collective implementing an agreed-upon agenda, there can be a cultural zeitgeist in which the many individuals and smaller groups in a specific group subscribe to the same perspective, come to conclusions independently, and apply their efforts accordingly. Perhaps an even more glaring omission is the way Anthony’s claim dismisses the very real possibility that Jews are indeed acting in their own interests to the detriment of others, hence causing justifiable anger.

Much of the book is a polemic in favor of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA), a document that is being “endorsed and adopted worldwide” by governing bodies and institutions.[8] Opponents suggest it is being used to “suppress criticism of Israel.”[9] The Definition provides eleven “examples” of forbidden antisemitism which, taken as a group, define antisemitism. Consider just one of these examples:

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

In other words, ordinary human mental processes such as detecting patterns of behavior are forbidden when applied to Jews or Israel. Jewish influence also should not be discussed: Nelson suggests that the existence of a “vastly powerful ‘Israel lobby’” is “an antisemitic fiction.”[10] That claim is delusional or disingenuous; Zionist advocacy firms such as the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are suspiciously permitted to act as domestic lobbyists rather than as foreign agents. U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie has gone on record saying that every Republican Congressman except himself has his or her own AIPAC liaison—“a baby-sitter”—dedicated to them. And eleven of the top 25 individual political donors in 2024 were Jewish. Yet Nelson demands that mentioning such influence is out of bounds for those who wish to work in academia.

Two other IHRA examples, taken together as a whole, greatly limit all but the accepted consensus about the Holocaust:

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Historians all over the world pore over every scrap of evidence related to every event that ever mattered throughout time. New evidence about long-past events is regularly discovered, and yet this one relatively recent event—where there are still many unanswered questions and unproven claims—cannot be independently examined?

Still, as broadly written as are the eleven examples in the IHRA, they are insufficient for Nelson. He lists 32 more, including such prohibitions as: “Inventing demonstrably false claims or conspiracy theories about Israeli actions” or “supporting the UN’s selective investigation of and enforcement actions against Israel.”[11] And he lists another 10 that “merit being studied” for some sort of sanction, including “scheduling antisemitic speakers,” which clearly is protected by the free speech rights of student groups to invite whoever they wish. [N11]

Together, these examples seem to be almost an entire Torah’s worth of prohibitions, greatly narrowing permissible criticism of Israel and Jews. Nelson is not entirely one-sided in his defense of Zionism; at times he adheres to a proper treatment of academic freedom, making his case seem even-handed to those not looking too closely. He properly defends the right to criticize Israel policy: “Neither in teaching nor in writing, however, should criticism of Israeli government policy be considered inherently anti-Zionist or antisemitic.”[12] However, after maneuvering through the minefield of forbidden examples, any such criticism is likely to lack teeth.

Nelson’s true hypocrisy becomes more clear when the status of whites is considered. Any equivalence between Jews and whites is anathema; Nelson decries the “weaponization of vocabulary” when opponents refer to Jews as “settler colonists.[13] The evils of colonialism are reserved for Europeans by definition: he laments that anti-Zionists claim that “Israel becomes a colonialist state even though it never served as an outpost of a European power.”[14]

Nelson does little to hide his animosity toward those descended from Europeans, freely throwing around the term “white supremacy” to describe the entire realm of white thought that is not self-loathing or defeatist. There is no attempt to separate the increasingly non-existent “supremacists” from the growing number of reasonable advocates for equal rights for whites in a pluralist society, or from those who wish no animosity toward others but merely want a land of their own. His academic freedom recommendations include the claim that having expressed any pro-white beliefs disqualifies one from being hired or tenured for an academic position.[15] However, he goes easier on those who are already hired and tenured: “in order to preserve academic freedom, we must tolerate some loathsome tenured faculty.”[16] But then he doesn’t really mean he will tolerate them: “I would sanction them in such a way as to discredit them.”[17]

Some background knowledge about academic freedom may be required here. It is not an unbounded right, allowing academics to say whatever they want at any time without fear of professional repercussions. There are essentially three levels of protection. The first concerns teaching and other contact with students; various court rulings have given institutions the right to control what is said in the classroom. An institution may choose to ignore a faculty member overstepping his or her rights, but it has legal control and can impose sanctions on offenders.

Such “intramural comments” were part of the reason Professor Amy Wax got into trouble recently. After she “fought the good fight” for many years to introduce ideas on the University of Pennsylvania campus that are outside the establishment consensus, the Penn administration was looking for a reason to fire or sanction her. Despite intense scrutiny, she refused to police her speech to stay withing the approved limits and was bluntly honest and direct in her in-class comments and communications to students. As a result, after placing her comments under a microscope, the school was able to find what it needed to punish her according to the rules of the leftist consensus.

Nelson agreed that Wax’s factual comments on race “be sanctioned.”[18] Yet he wants to leave a giant loophole for politicized intramural comments for leftist faculty, writing that “academic freedom gives faculty members in humanities and other fields the right to teach one-sided courses if their departments assign them the subject area.”[19] He argues for “carefully reasoned political advocacy in the classroom, so long as students were encouraged to hold or present opposing views.”[20] There can be a great deal of mischief in “advocacy” and “one-sided courses,” and students seeing their teacher passionately “advocate” for his ideals are likely to hold back opposing comments out of a sense of self-preservation. And given Nelson’s own beliefs—cultural Marxism, aggressive Zionism, and a claim that “rooting out racism should be America’s foremost cultural priority”[21]—his definition for “carefully reasoned” should be eyed suspiciously. If his approval of Wax’s punishment is any indication, it would appear that factual truth can be treated as not “carefully reasoned.”

The other two categories of academic freedom protections deal with “extramural” comments, those made outside the classroom that are not concerned with the university itself. The freedom given to extramural comments is especially broad if they are made about topics outside the academic’s own areas of expertise. This category applies to Professor Arthur Butz of Northwestern University. Butz has been a vocal proponent of the idea that the Holocaust was not fact but propaganda. Yet he is a professor of electrical engineering and refrains from mentioning the Holocaust in his classes, so he is free to speak as he pleases on the matter outside of class. That might not be the case if he were a professor of history or political science, however.

There is a caveat to extramural speech, however. Academics can go too far even when speaking outside their expertise—if unhinged, irrational, or violent. An example of this is Steven Salaita, who was rejected as a prospective faculty member by the board at Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (Nelson’s own institution) for making comments promoting violence such as wishing that more Israeli teenagers would be kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian rebels. It’s one thing to criticize Israeli policy, or promote Palestinian political power, but another to call for the murder of innocent non-combatants; such commentary suggests a lack of proper “fitness” for an educator. Again, Nelson gets this concept right in the Salaita case—after all, Salaita called for killing teenagers.

But such prudence disappears when Jews are not under attack. It is not so much his definition of academic freedom that is the problem, but his definition of “unfit.” To him, all statements advocating for white rights—no matter how minor—deem one “unfit” for an academic position.

The third category is when a professor makes extramural comments—but within their area of expertise. Such comments deserve much greater scrutiny than those outside their own fields. It is a much more serious matter when a professor of geology or astronomy makes public comments that the moon is made of green cheese than when an accounting professor does so. An example is Norman Finkelstein, a professor of political science who also questions various aspects of the Holocaust (his parents were survivors of camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek). In 2007, he was denied tenure at DePaul University because his Holocaust commentary.

There may be some temptation to remove all restrictions on academic speech, thereby ending the ability of institutions to use the “letter of the law” against Wax and Finkelstein—who are exactly the types of scholars academic freedom is intended to protect. But to do so means removing any potential constraints on the vast number of leftist academics who will stop educating according to their schools’ standards and start blatantly training activists. After all, unsuspecting students have academic freedom rights not to be indoctrinated.

As suggested above, the problem is that the left has been allowed to establish its consensus as the standard for determining whether speech is improper. The standard should instead focus on method: if writers and researchers use proper methodology to derive their claims—Finkelstein and Wax appear to be meticulous in such matters—they should not be sanctioned. While Nelson does agree at one point in the book that method is the proper measure, in many more places he upholds his agreement that pro-white sentiments should be impermissible without consideration for how those opinions are derived and supported.

Nelson is also not overbearing when it comes to doling out punishments. He favors restraint when faculty cross the line into excessively political speech. And when invited speakers offend leftist (or Jewish) sensibilities, Nelson appropriately does not favor disinviting them. That would be against the principle of free speech—but he wants to implement the dictum that “the answer to hate speech is more speech” in an improper manner. His solution is for the school to devote considerable time and resources to counter speech of which he disapproves: “free speech needs to be augmented with structured programs addressing racism and antisemitism.”[22] Another facet of his solution is to hire additional “faculty willing to teach more historically responsible courses.”[23]

This solution has two major problems. The first is that it requires the academic institution to take positions on open political questions to “correct” the thoughts of the speaker. This violates another important principle in higher education: “institutional neutrality,” which forbids a public school from taking sides in a contested political debate. This is especially true for public universities, which are frequently subject to state laws that mandate neutrality. But most private institutions today aspire to neutrality as well, except those that explicitly have a religious mission.

Second, his idea of “historically responsible” is at least as biased as the speech he wishes to address. His ideas about “racism and antisemitism” are skewed; his opinion of this country is predictably damning, asking “Where is the call for a structural analysis of the racialized U.S. justice system?”[24] About the U.S. he states that “the horrific scale and duration of the genocide against Native Americans and the equally horrific history and continuing legacy of slavery so thoroughly dwarf anything one can say about Israeli history as to make any moral comparison between the two unintelligible.”[25] That, too, is a very open question, with strong arguments to be made against Nelson’s claim.

Yet, despite his urging academia to cast neutrality aside and throw its reputation and resources behind countering so-called “white supremacy,” Nelson demands that universities remain neutral when doing so benefits Israel. The “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement has been increasingly forwarded by anti-Zionist activists as a way to cripple Israel in the last few years. Divestment in this case means that university boards and endowment managers should sell off the school’s investments in corporations that do business in or with Israel. The movement has been highly unsuccessful since divesting means declaring support for an anti-Israel political policy, which would be a clear violation of institutional neutrality.
This double-edged treatment of key academic principles reveals Nelson’s real goals: as a good leftist, he wants universities to drop their neutral façade in order to condemn and counter all pro-white opinions. As a good Zionist, he wants them to uphold neutrality to aid Israel.

But to be true to the key academic principles of academic freedom, free speech, and institutional neutrality, the same standards must exist for all—not just Nelson’s favored demographic. If something called “hate speech” is to exist, it cannot be used to protect just one privileged group. Until white advocacy for equal rights is treated as legitimate in academia, such universal fairness is likely to remain “beyond the Pale.” It is time to call the academic establishment out for its hypocrisy and basic lack of fairness.

Notes

[1] Cary Nelson, Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles, (Brookline, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2024) 4.

[2] Nelson, 3.

[3] Nelson, 54.

[4] Nelson, 40.

[5] Nelson, 231.

[6] Nelson, 21.

[7] Nelson, 56.

[8] Nelson, 197.

[9] Nelson, 197.

[10] Nelson, 4.

[11] Nelson, 213.

[12] Nelson, 22.

[13] Nelson, 131.

[14] Nelson 157.

[15] Nelson, 47-8.

[16] Nelson, 82.

[17] Nelson, 275.

[18] Nelson, 82.

[19] Nelson, 118.

[20] Nelson, 50.

[21] Nelson, 82.

[22] Nelson, 274.

[23] Nelson, 12.

[24] Nelson, 180.

[25] Nelson, 22.