https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/double-standard-free-speech-vanderbilt-richard-l-cravatts/
On February 23rd, Vanderbilt’s Chabad hosted a speaking event by Rudy Rochman, who describes himself as a “Jewish & Israel Rights Activist,” “with the intention,” as Chabad put it, “of creating a productive conversation around the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the history of Judaism, and antisemitism.”
Rochman, who was a founder of Columbia University’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) when he was a student there, is known to be a pro-Israel activist so his audience would naturally be anticipating that sentiment from him. Additionally, Rochman had recently traveled to Nigeria where he had been imprisoned for three weeks, and, as Chabad explained in an Instagram post after the event, Rochman used “his personal traumatic experience in order to call attention to the systemic antisemitism against the Igbo tribe in Nigeria.”
Normally, if someone is discussing bigotry against minority groups and human rights violations in third-world countries, he would enjoy commiseration by the virtue-signaling identity groups on campus, but not in Rochman’s case due to his Zionist identity and his vigorous defense of Israel.
To challenge his unforgivable support of what is alleged to be an apartheid, racist regime, some activist students, members of The African Student Union (ASU) and the Indigenous Scholars Organization (ISO) attended the event, seemingly with the express purpose to challenge and debate Rochman. “A group of roughly 30 students mostly all of color,” the ASU and ISO wrote in a statement after the event, “planned to attend the event and ask Rudy questions during the Q&A section as a form of protest.” [Emphasis added.] So, clearly, the students were expecting, and hoping, to be offended by Rochman’s speech, and so they were.