I like what FIRE does to counter the speech suppressing effects of cancel culture. But you make a good point by asking also about the free exercise of religion protections provided by the First Amendment as they apply to Jews and what they are up against. And I think even this only begins to touch on what Jews now confront on our elite college campuses. That's because "cancel culture" is much more than speech suppression. It is an ideology that singles out some for cancellation and not others on the basis of group characteristics and ideological commitments. Jews are a religion and a people and (since 1948) a nation. All three (even those of us who do not inhabit that nation's territory, whether we accept or not). The cancel culture we face now, based as it is on an entire DEI-shaped system of ideas, necessarily singles out Jews in this sense as oppressors and enemies. The universities have imported this ideology into the very fabric of their functioning. And so I do not believe "institutional neutrality" regarding speech will be enough to bring about the restoration that is needed.
I like what FIRE does to counter the speech suppressing effects of cancel culture. But you make a good point by asking also about the free exercise of religion protections provided by the First Amendment as they apply to Jews and what they are up against. And I think even this only begins to touch on what Jews now confront on our elite college campuses. That's because "cancel culture" is much more than speech suppression. It is an ideology that singles out some for cancellation and not others on the basis of group characteristics and ideological commitments. Jews are a religion and a people and (since 1948) a nation. All three (even those of us who do not inhabit that nation's territory, whether we accept or not). The cancel culture we face now, based as it is on an entire DEI-shaped system of ideas, necessarily singles out Jews in this sense as oppressors and enemies. The universities have imported this ideology into the very fabric of their functioning. And so I do not believe "institutional neutrality" regarding speech will be enough to bring about the restoration that is needed.