We Must Hold Onto Free Speech Principles In The Israel-Hamas War

Concerning cancellations are resurfacing the cancel culture debate and raising the stakes

This is a heavy topic, and I didn’t want to write or speak publicly about it because I didn’t feel like it was my place with no personal stake in the conflict. I am not Jewish, Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian. In the coming weeks and months, I believe any additional civilian death is too many, and that an eye for an eye makes the world blind.

I am not an expert on the conflict, but I, like many Americans, have been an observer of the very troubling and polarizing response to the conflict.

I, like many, am observing a very troubling trend — the willingness of many in America to use cancel culture and discard the principles of free speech to punish people with opinions they don’t like. This has often been more a critique of more moderate and right-leaning Americans against the left in recent years. But in this moment, the tides of cancellation are turning in the other direction, with progressive, pro-Palestinian activists being the target.

The stakes right now feel extremely high. Over 1,400 people died in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, and I spent hours awake at night watching the horrific videos of an Israeli woman being paraded through the street and being taken hostage. Since then, at least 3,785 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli air strikes, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The contention over who exactly bombarded the Al-Ahli Christian hospital in Gaza has been emblematic of the deep divisions and information wars of supporters of Palestine versus supporters of Israel in America. And if the Israeli Defense Forces does go door to door in Gaza, there will be far too many innocent lives lost.

On October 10, three days following Hamas’s attack on Israel, New York University (NYU) law student Ryna Workman wrote a newsletter to the Student Bar Association (essentially student government in law school) at NYU, most controversially stating that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” They later said “this regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary” and that they “will not condemn Palestinian resistance.”

It was a statement that was seen as, at worst, defending and even glorifying terrorism, and at best, a completely tone-deaf statement made shortly after more Jews were killed in one day than any day since the Holocaust.

According to Vimal Patel and Anemona Hartocollis in the New York Times, the backlash was very swift, and law firm Winston & Strawn rescinded its job offer to Workman. The NYU School of Law put Workman under investigation for “bias and/or discriminatory behavior,” and could not comment on the investigation for legal reasons.

I shared the news of Workman losing her offer with some friends and came across some very valid points. One Jewish friend disagreed with the student losing her offer. But he did point out — how can they be so stupid? A law school is the worst possible place to voice that opinion.

How can someone not know how many lawyers are Jewish? How can someone not know how many lawyers are unilaterally pro-Israel? Another said it would be different if they just posted the opinion on her own social media or Facebook page — but sending the letter as an agent and even president of a student bar association is different — how is it supposed to make a Jewish student on campus feel to see that statement? How would a Jewish student feel safe? Using the platform of the law school’s student government to elevate your inflammatory opinion crosses a line.

As a law student, I found Mx. Workman’s statement deeply unsettling given the moment and the fact that all of a sudden it seems to be okay to openly make antisemitic statements on the left, but I found the response from the law firm and law school even more unsettling. NYU was not the only school where something like this happened: law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell said it rescinded three job offers made to students at Columbia and Harvard.

Another very high profile example of “cancellation” is that of Harvard students who signed a pro-Palestine letter shortly after the Hamas attacks. Eren Orbey at the New Yorker notes over thirty student organizations signed a letter that said, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

The letter was immediately condemned across social media, including by former Harvard President Larry Summers, who blasted current administrators for their “failure to disassociate the University and condemn this statement,” and asked why Harvard could instantly issue a statement regarding the murder of George Floyd and Russia invading the Ukraine, but not Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Shortly thereafter, several conservative websites started to publicize information of students in the student organizations that signed the letter. Billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumnus and donor, asked the university to release the individual names of signatories on the letter so CEOs knew not to “inadvertently hire” the students.

This led to at least nine campus groups retracting their signatures and individual students who signed the letter disavowing the letter as well. Some Muslim students who were personally identified by Accuracy in Media, a watchdog group that allegedly targets liberal bias in the media, reported receiving death threats. A billboard truck from Accuracy in Media flashed the names and photos of student leaders in many signatory organizations, directing anyone who saw the billboard to the website “HarvardHatesJews.com.”

I am and have always been a free speech absolutist. Maybe five or six years ago, that would have been a pretty popular view, but now it is not. I stand by the fact that you should not lose your job for voicing your opinion, even if it’s a horrible opinion, even if it defends terrorism. I don’t really voice this view in a lot of many progressive circles since it’s becoming very unpopular.

But I still hold it, especially in this moment, with a McCarthy-esque moment of seemingly everyone on the fringes of the right and left are willing to target someone’s employment or reputation for speech they don’t like. Even calling what’s going on to pro-Palestinian graduate students and supporters “cancel culture” usually elicits a lot of criticism from the “cancel culture doesn’t exist — it’s called consequences” crowd on the left.

So that’s why it makes me deeply uncomfortable that cancel culture and the erosion of free speech principles are being used to silence people who support Palestine, and, yes, people who abhorrently voice support for and defend Hamas’s terrorist attack. In this current day and age, as a liberal and pretty progressive person, I find the fact that both sides are willing to go for the jugular in compromising someone’s livelihood for expressing their very unpopular opinion a troubling state of affairs.

My first instinct upon hearing about Hamas’s attack on Israel was “wow, that’s terrible” as I reached out to one of my best friends who was just in Israel on a birthright trip to see if everyone he knew was safe and okay. My second instinct, along the lines of most super sensitive and polarizing issues in America, was “shut up and don’t say anything publicly because whatever you say is going to offend a ton of people.”

I’m sure a lot of people, whether they are pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, or just concerned onlookers who want the killing of innocent civilians to stop, feel the latter statement.

Of course, people seeking these real-world consequences for speech would see my label as “speech they don’t like” as a drastic oversimplification. To many, Workman’s email is not just bad speech, but hate speech and speech that glorifies violence.

The critics of people losing their jobs for posting the wrong opinion use the same talking points many used in the wake of cancellations across other recent social justice movements. It’s not a government reprisal (which the First Amendment protects against), but social censuring and consequences. And I want to be clear about where I stand: book bans and other uses of state power to ban speech in K-12 classrooms are a lot more dangerous than, say, all your progressive friends calling you out on social media for having the wrong opinion on X, Y, or Z topic.

To summarize comments I have read in the New York Times and Washington Post regarding the conflict and other free speech-related issues, I will summarize a couple criticisms of free speech in this day and age:

• You can say whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.
• Private corporations are free to do whatever they want and need to protect their reputations, so it’s perfectly okay to fire someone for their political opinion.
• Speech that incites and glorifies violence and hate should not be protected and you should lose your job for that.
• Free speech is protected from government censorship under the First Amendment, so there’s nothing stopping private actors from being shamed or shunned.
• We never lived in a society where people could say whatever they want and never will — that’s a naive thing to believe.
• Why are you complaining about shaming people for saying terrible things when Ron DeSantis and Republicans are using state power to ban minority and LGBTQ+ authors in libraries?
• You should be able to shut down speech that is misinformation or that threatens others’ safety.

Like most people, I have also been shocked and appalled to see the amount of people defending Hamas’s attack, particularly on my side on the very far left. I used to sympathize with the ideals of the Democratic Socialists of America, but now, I see the DSA rally held in New York City of many justifying the horrendous deaths of a thousand civilians as pretty disgusting (including one protestor openly displaying a swastika), and the failure of many DSA activists in failing to condemn the attacks as a loss of legitimacy.

Nowhere is this more evident than examples of the most progressive members of Congress disavowing the DSA, or at least this particular chapter. Jamaal Bowman let his DSA membership lapse and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chastised the New York chapter of the DSA for the “bigotry and callousness” of the rally.

I have long shaken my head at the fact that how pro-Palestine and anti-Israel you are in certain progressive circles has become a litmus test of your progressive credentials (since it stops people from thinking for themselves), even as a very big critic of the Israeli government. To me, the DSA and many rank-and-file members’s callousness about an atrocious terrorist attack that killed over a thousand people in a horrific way is a sign that so many people in this moment, and particularly around this conflict, have prioritized ideology and politics over humanity. I was further dismayed to see the reluctance of many college administrators to condemn the initial Hamas attacks like they did the murder of George Floyd or the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

But in the last week, I have also been dismayed at the lack of condemnation in America’s elite at Israel’s retaliation and the rationale that Israel’s right to defend itself gives it the right to inflict mass casualties and mass displacement in Gaza. While any state has the right to defend itself, how many Palestinian casualties do we need to have before America’s politicians say “alright, that’s enough”? How many more missiles and rockets have to be fired before Israel has defended itself enough? When will we stop rationalizing a humanitarian crisis?

Right now, supporters of Palestine in America and abroad should have a right to express themselves— so as private actors, it is increasingly important to uphold free speech principles in this moment. Not every criticism of Israel is hate speech or anti-semitic, even if statements like those of Mx. Workman crossed the line.

Some might see free speech as a distraction, but we are entering an era where the rules of engagement in political discussions are becoming “we should have free speech for my side, but not yours” and “there should only be free speech if you have the right opinion.” In this particular context, making job elimination and doxing a possibility makes less people willing to call out the humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza, which is not a good thing.

This is an incredibly dangerous place to be, because if you’re for limiting the free speech of the opposing side, what’s to stop the other side from doing the same to you? Free speech used to be seen as a very liberal and left-wing issue, until in recent years when the right tried to simultaneously champion the issue while also having its legislatures ban books and regulate what can or can’t be taught in classrooms.

In his podcast, Time to Say Goodbye, my favorite writer, Jay Caspian Kang, mentioned the intense criticism he came across in left-wing and organizing circles for his free speech absolutist views. The topic was the ability of social media companies like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) to regulate speech, and Jay’s argument was basically “these companies will also use this censorship against activists when it becomes politically convenient.”

I completely agree, because in left-wing and progressive circles, the message to anyone who holds a heterodox view, and particularly conservatives, was “read the room before expressing your opinion.” Now, it’s many pro-Palestine graduate students who are seen as the ones failing to read the room and suffering consequences for doing so, which is ironic — I would bet on most very left-leaning graduate students in academia having the “right” opinion on virtually every other culture war or political issue, so the recent tragedy certainly flips the equation.

We are witnessing an increasingly fragile and sensitive political moment, where it seems like a lot more people are willing to play hardball and seek real-world social or professional consequences for speech than to engage in good faith debate and discussion.

I see the pushback — a supporter of Israel would say “what debate and discussion is there to be had when people defend terrorism, the murder of thousands of Jews, and the killing of women and children?” An advocate for Palestine would say “what debate and discussion is there to be had when so many people have turned a blind eye to over half a century of apartheid and ignore the genocide occurring before our eyes?”

I think in this moment, the defenses free speech absolutists would have had, including trying to change people’s minds through persuasion rather than shouting and having a healthy disagreement, are increasingly ringing thin. And they’re ringing thin for good reason. Debate and discussion aren’t going to bring back the thousands of casualties in this war, nor is it going to stop the conflict and bring instantaneous peace. It seems like we’re past the point of this conflict for people on either side of the conflict to “engage in good faith.” Critics of people who urge adherence to free speech principles at this moment may ask whether it’s really the right thing to focus on right now with thousands of people dying, and the potential of even more dying in coming weeks.

Yes, the stakes are extremely high right now. And I’ve seen social media posts among very progressive friends on the Palestinian side (all very good people whose character I would defend any day of the week) lament how the power structure of major corporations and law firms is unequivocally pro-Israel at this moment. Even pretty moderate friends who are critics of the Israeli government, but not in the DSA, have expressed that it’s not about being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine — it’s about whether you defend the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust or not. If I were Palestinian-American, I would be feeling pretty abandoned by the media and American power structure. If I were Jewish, no matter how progressive I am, I would feel abandoned by the left’s continued justifications of anti-semitism and mass murder.

Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist who has spent his entire career covering the region, said in Matter of Opinion “I love Israelis and Palestinians, but God save me from their American friends.” The implication is that across the Atlantic Ocean and thousands of miles from the conflict, we’re too busy arguing over what’s true or what’s not, who’s right or who’s not, rather than really seeking solutions that would improve matters for Palestinians and Israelis. I would hope the vast majority of us agree that murder, violence, and any unnecessary civilian death are bad and should stop as soon as possible.

So perhaps to many, we need less inflammatory opinions in the public sphere, not more.

But people in their 20s and in college should be allowed to have (from the perspective of a law firm, for example) shitty opinions and not have the rug of their future pulled under them for saying, even if it’s very twisted and misguided logic, what they believe to be right. People would not sign a letter unless they believed it to be right — as repugnant as many of us find that letter to be, the answer is not to shame or silence or ruin the lives of the people who signed it.

Free speech non-profit, the Foundation for Individual Rights, wrote a letter to NYU expressing its concern over Workman’s investigation of her letter because of the chilling effect such an investigation can have on campus speech.

“Consequently, NYU’s public reference to Workman’s speech as potential misconduct sends a chilling message not only to Workman, but to all students and faculty that they may face disciplinary action for engaging in core political expression,” FIRE said.

The letter added that, since there was substantial pressure for the school to add professional consequences and possible disciplinary action for Workman sends the message that “students face additional incentives to self-censor rather than risk any kind of misconduct investigation that could forestall their legal careers.”

Aaron Terr at FIRE cites additional examples of reactions to opinions of the conflict, which include NYU students ripping down posters of missing hostages, members of Congress threatening to defund colleges for not condemning anti-Israel statements, members of Congress trying to stop “illegal protests in support of Jewish genocide,” or trying to get college professors fired for their anti-Israel statements.

One law professor at the University of California, Berkeley penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students,” defending free speech but also defending the need to have professional consequences for speech that “advocates discrimination, hate, Jew-hatred, rape, murder, killing babies, hostage-taking.”

I think, at the end of the day, if you say you defend free speech but advocate maintaining professional consequences for that speech, we’re going down the slippery slope and opening the gates to weaponizing censorship. I’m not naive, either — I’ve learned, from experience, when I have an opinion that I need to shut up about and when I can voice my opinions openly, especially in the last couple of years.

The danger lies in the fact that once we okay weaponizing silencing, censorship, and job elimination for people who defend the Hamas attack and people who blame Israel for the attack, even under the most valid of circumstances, there will come a time when the next big social or geopolitical crisis will restrict speech even more. In the era of social media, the stakes of speech are so high, all the time.

There are, yes, more important things than free speech and human lives on the line. But maintaining our commitment to free speech is still extremely important. I think most people would say it’s been that way for a long time, but in a moment as sensitive and polarizing as this, the message is clear: no one is safe, and not all speech is equally protected.