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Speech does not enjoy absolute protection when it promotes hate against identifiable groups

“Freedom for me but not for thee” suits those who have the power to decide whose opinions are worth protecting — those who set the agenda, dictate culture and policy, and have an ability to pile on with sheer strength in numbers. You can find them in unions, on university faculties and student councils.

In earlier years, those same groups championed free speech on campus as a means to justify the targeting of Israel and, by extension, Jewish students. Appeal after appeal from Jewish groups registering concern about the anti-Semitism being promoted by events like “Israeli Apartheid Week” and on-campus Israeli boycotts were excused by university officials offering the same standard operating procedure: it’s free speech, dummy.

The inability of universities to set red lines back then resulted in the mess they find themselves in today. A campus environment that winked at veiled anti-Semitism ended up opening the door to blatant hatred not only against Jewish students but other minorities.

This road was paved by faculty and students who have discriminated against Jewish people on campuses for years

For the very reason that universities refused to act against discrimination targeting Jewish students, everything now seems permissible — even Nazism. In the last few weeks alone, posters turned up at the University of Guelph with offensive material about Muslims, Jews and LGBT people, and at UBC a blackboard was found with a swastika and the message “Heil Hitler,” and just days later, on Remembrance Day, posters turned up on campus celebrating Nazis as the “true heroes” of the Second World War. Clearly Pandora’s box is open, as some people now see universities as a safe space to express racist and intolerable attitudes toward Jews and other minorities.