Lawless Expression of Anti-Semitism Isn’t Free Speech

Few House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearings are as memorable as one in December 2023, and readers will immediately recall the recurring phrase from it. Whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated campus rules regarding speech and harassment “depends on the context,” as multiple university presidents repeated that day. If they were simply construing First Amendment law, and the line between protected and non-protected speech, they would be right. But they made two errors that day: one that revealed itself immediately, and another that has taken time to crystallize.