{"id":375105,"date":"2018-08-27T19:53:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T18:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/defining-anti-semitism-threatening-free-speech\/"},"modified":"2018-08-27T19:53:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T18:53:21","slug":"defining-anti-semitism-threatening-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/defining-anti-semitism-threatening-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Anti-Semitism, Threatening Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_104831\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-104831\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/2762803231_7df3fa546e_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"383\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/2762803231_7df3fa546e_z.jpg 510w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/2762803231_7df3fa546e_z-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo Source Qusai Al Shidi | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In May the benign-sounding Anti-Semitism Awareness Act appeared before the U.S Congress \u201cto provide for consideration a definition of anti-Semitism for the enforcement of Federal antidiscrimination laws concerning education programs or activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No big deal? Let us see.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/115th-congress\/senate-bill\/2940\/text\">S. 2940<\/a> is sponsored by Republican Sen. Tim Scott and has four co-sponsors: Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrats Ron Wyden, Robert Casey, and Michael Bennet. The House sponsor of H.R. 5924 is Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, with 41 cosponsors, 30 Republicans and 11 Democrats. Both bills remain in committee. (The Senate passed a similar bill two years ago, but it never reached the House floor.)<\/p>\n<p>Right off the bat, the legislation seems odd: under what Republican Party theory of limited government does Congress proposes definitions of words simply <i>for consideration<\/i> for educational purposes? And I thought Republicans don\u2019t like federal involvement in education. We\u2019ll see that the answer is steeped in irony: the stated purpose is to help education agencies to combat racial discrimination.<\/p>\n<p>While the act is directed at education, the resulting law would reach beyond that realm because it would officially stigmatize as anti-Semitic any speech and activity, public and private, said to fall within the definition. Since this would at least chill the open marketplace of ideas, advocates of free speech should be concerned about the content of the definition and its&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/08\/27\/defining-anti-semitism-threatening-free-speech\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo Source Qusai Al Shidi | CC BY 2.0 In May the benign-sounding Anti-Semitism Awareness Act appeared before the U.S Congress \u201cto provide for consideration a definition of anti-Semitism for the enforcement of Federal antidiscrimination laws concerning education programs or activities.\u201d No big deal? Let us see. S. 2940 is sponsored by Republican Sen. Tim [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-375105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}