Major Jewish groups want ‘Zionist’ to be a protected class on campus

Will colleges soon require students to pledge to treat everyone equally, regardless of their positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? And would that entail giving a pro-Israel student a speaking slot at a protest against the war in Gaza? These are some of the questions raised by a new set of campus guidelines just released by some of the country’s largest Jewish groups.

It’s relatively easy — at least in principle — for colleges and universities to solve discrimination that has a measurable impact. If you aren’t enrolling enough Black students, you could use affirmative action to boost those numbers (at least until the Supreme Court banned it last this year). You can increase funding for women’s sports if female students don’t have the same athletic opportunities as male students. And elevators can make your campus more accessible to students who use wheelchairs.

But the “campus antisemitism” crisis does not refer to concrete institutional discrimination against Jews. Rather, students who feel some positive attachment to Israel are being ostracized by other students. And since Jewish students are disproportionately supportive of Israel — generally for reasons related to being Jewish — many feel that this ostracization is antisemitic.

Leaders of many of the most powerful Jewish organizations in the country agree. Hillel International, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and several other groups jointly released four guidelines last week for campus administrators to follow in the coming school year.

The throughline is a demand for colleges and universities to prohibit discrimination against Jewish students who support Israel — a move that would effectively place Zionism alongside protected classes like race, color, religion, sex and disability.

For example, under “support Jewish students” the guidelines call for schools to stop “campus organizations, clubs, and institutions” from banning Zionists and conduct training for all students on antisemitism “including anti-Zionism.”

Rigid guidelines could obscure context

The rigidity of these suggested guidelines may be their downfall. The reference to making sure “the majority of Jewish students for whom Israel is an important component of their Jewish identity, have full and equal access to all the school’s registered student organizations” sounds reasonable, and was likely intended to address cases like that of the Jewish students kicked out of a sexual assault support group over Israel.

But are these organizations really suggesting that political clubs like Students for Justice in Palestine, which advocates for a boycott of Israel, should be required to accept students who support Israel so long as they are Jewish? Or, since the guidelines state that all Jewish students must have “full and equal access” to all clubs “without exception,” would an anti-Zionist Jewish student — common on many campuses — have to be accepted by a pro-Israel club?

The guidelines also call for harsh restrictions on campus protests, including encouraging university police to enforce school rules around demonstrations and asking officials to bring in local law enforcement “when necessary.”

“Conduct that blocks free access to any university spaces must not be tolerated, and appropriate consequences must be imposed for violations,” the guidelines state. The groups who authored this report are clearly trying to address specific incidents — pro-Palestinian student protesters who occupied buildings and in some instances sought to ban “Zionists” from parts of campus — but the recommendation is so sweeping that it would also cover sit-ins to protest climate change or tuition hikes.

The four guidelines are obviously just suggestions and I doubt that schools will adopt them wholesale. But it’s striking to see so many large Jewish organizations sign onto such a specific set of recommendations — in addition to the groups mentioned above, they’re endorsed by the Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Conservative movement and the National Council of Jewish Women. That  widespread support should boost their legitimacy.

One thing I’ll be watching for is what happens at schools that do accept some of the major calls from the guidelines, like the demand that universities ban discrimination against Zionist students. The University of Illinois did so four years ago , but that didn’t stop anti-Zionist students from participating in a two-week tent encampment this spring.