Struggling to balance free speech with concerns about bias, University of California regents stepped back Wednesday from a blanket condemnation of anti-Zionism as discrimination and voted to disapprove "anti-Semitic forms" of the political ideology. The regents had considered approving a report on intolerance featuring a sweeping condemnation of anti-Zionism, a step Israel advocacy groups had pushed to protect Jewish students from hostility. But free-speech advocates said the unprecedented move would illegally restrict free speech and criticism of the Jewish state. At a packed board meeting, Regent Norman J. Pattiz proposed to modify the statement after feedback from the UC Academic Council and others.
The council, which represents faculty, had said in a letter to the regents that an unamended statement would harm academic freedom and cause “needless and expensive litigation, embarrassing to the university, to sort out the difference between intolerance on the one hand, and protected debate and study of Zionism and its alternatives on the other.”
The regents unanimously approved the statement that "Anti Semitism, anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California."...
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