Academic Freedom during Times of Political Correctness

Read Jay Schalin’s latest piece at the Pope Center on Zionists vs. ‘post-Zionists’:

In 2010, a seemingly insignificant event in a far-off land caught my eye. The Israeli academic world was having a fracas over the actions of “post-Zionist” faculty that raised important questions about the principle of academic freedom.

Briefly, Zionism is support for a religious Jewish state; post–Zionism refers to the desire for Zionist Israel to become secular. The post-Zionist academics were demanding not only that Israel became secular, but that it also permit the “right of return” to anybody who once lived within its borders. If denied, they called for an economic and intellectual boycott of their own nation, even in classes they taught at state-supported universities.

Perhaps from a secular U.S. perspective, post-Zionism may seem like an innocuous goal. However, the post-Zionist’s ultimatum about the right of return has some potentially dire consequences. The rapidly growing Islamic population would quickly gain the demographic majority and wrest control from the Jewish Israelis. Given much Palestinian rhetoric, the change could even mean a possible campaign of genocide against the Jewish people.

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