https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/284319/let-them-speak
Several Jewish students at the University of Massachusetts, UMass, have filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts state court seeking to block the school from hosting a May 4 panel that includes Linda Sarsour, Marc Lamont Hill, The Nation sportswriter Dave Zirin, and British singer Roger Waters. The students are right to draw attention to the noxious views of the speakers and the support for anti-Israel extremism within their school’s own administration. But they are wrong, and perhaps dangerously so, to mount a legal case that relies on shutting down speech by equating it to a form of intimidation. That stance not only pits them against the deep, and mainstream, American tradition of defending free expression, but it also legitimates a set of ideas that will be used against Jewish groups who, as a minority on campus, are especially reliant on the First Amendment.
An organization called Not Backing Down had invited the quartet, and two UMass academic departments—Communication, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies—found the Sarsour-Hill-Waters message significant enough to co-sponsor the event.
News of the panel has generated widespread condemnation from local and national Jewish organizations. The ADL’s regional director, for instance, wrote to the UMass chancellor to express concerns about the program “featuring speakers who engage in rhetoric that demonizes the State of Israel and seeks to marginalize its supporters,” raising “significant consternation among Jewish students and many others on campus and in the community.” Dozens of pro-Israel organizations added their concerns, though they made clear they were “not asking that this event be shut down.”
