free speech on campus is essential to education

An old memory was triggered while reading this November 2023 NYT Opinion piece:

“The targeting of Jewish students didn’t stop at Cornell: Jewish students at Cooper Union huddled in the library to escape an angry crowd pounding on the doors; a protester at a rally near New York University carried a sign calling for the world to be kept “clean” of Jews; messages like “glory to our martyrs” were projected onto a George Washington University building.”

In the 1970’s I was a student at Cooper Union when a club of Jewish students invited Zionist Meir Kahane and his militant Jewish Defense League to speak in the Foundation Building auditorium. The speech was hateful and racist. He implored Jews to stop supporting the negroes and swear allegiance to Israel. He chanted “never again, never again.”

I stood up in the name of academic freedom to state my objections and things got tense. I feared for my safety, but to my relief, Dore Ashton, a Jewish professor of mine, stood up in support of me and put a stop to the hostility – and I thank her for that. We must never forget that free speech is essential to education.

Rabbi Meir Kahane, went on to serve one term in Israel’s Knesset before being convicted of acts of terrorism.
Nonetheless, he was the honoree for Jewish American Heritage Month, see this 2021 high school newsletter mishap: “The email from Montclair High School stunned parents in the famously liberal New Jersey enclave Monday afternoon: Its pick to honor for Jewish American Heritage Month was the late ultra-nationalist radical Rabbi Meir Kahane.”

Professor Dore Ashton (circa 1980), The Cooper Union Foundation Building, 1970’s protest image