I am honored by the invitation to speak with you on this, the holiest of days in the Jewish calendar.

If I may, I would like to start on a personal note and tell you a bit about my family history.

My great-grandfather, Salomon Kalisch, was a lawyer in Breslau, Germany, and a prominent member of the Reform community in that city.

He is buried in Haifa, Israel, having died there in 1934 while visiting two of his sons, who escaped persecution and murder in Germany only because they were able to make aliyah to what was then mandatory Palestine.

Salomon had three sons and his eldest was my grandfather, Hans. Hans was among the fortunate minority who obtained American visas. He, along with my grandmother, and my mother, who was at the time an eight-year-old girl, arrived in New York City in May 1940. They escaped in the nick of time.

As some of you know, my mother concealed her Jewish identity throughout her adult life, hiding it from her husband, her children, and everyone else.

My sisters believe that my mother simply preferred to be Catholic, taking advantage of the distinctly American freedom to choose one’s religion and remake oneself.

I believe something darker, which is that my mother concluded, after a childhood in which she was chased from Europe by a genocidal army, that being Jewish was a dangerous way to exist in this world.

I think that she wanted to protect her children from the terrifying threats that she had experienced, so she tried to erase our Jewish identities forever.

It was my son’s fourth-grade family history project in 2008 that led me to discover my Jewish identity, and I embraced it immediately.

Because of the story I have just told you, this is almost certainly the first time that an adult descendant of Hans Kalisch has spoken at, or indeed entered, a synagogue on Yom Kippur. 

And in light of this story, it is both ironic and distressing that my topic this afternoon pertains to the rising incidence of antisemitism in America, including but not limited to college campuses.

Up until last year, I could say that I had neither experienced nor personally observed any antisemitic comment or act on the Princeton campus in the nearly 45 years since I first arrived here as a freshman.

I can no longer say that. I have been the target of antisemitic comments or behavior twice in the past six months. I know that at least some of our Jewish students, faculty, and staff have had similar experiences.

We are unfortunately being reminded yet again—in Princeton, in America, and around the world—that, as my mother apparently concluded, being openly Jewish can be a dangerous way to exist in this world.

I want to be clear about this: I believe that antisemitism remains rare at Princeton. Indeed, I believe—though I know that not everyone will agree—that antisemitism is rare even among those on our campus who protest against the actions of the Israeli government.

I also believe that Princeton University continues to be a wonderful place to be Jewish. I feel that personally, and it is consistent with what our students report, both in personal conversation and in the surveys that we conduct.

Princeton’s Jewish students report levels of satisfaction and belonging as high or higher than those of other campus groups, and that was true even amid the tumultuous events of last year.

These are statistical averages, and there are no doubt exceptions, but in general the overall experience of Jewish students on the Princeton campus has been very good.

We need to bear in mind that all these things can be true at the same time. A college, or a town, can be a very good place for Jews, and it can also experience a disturbing uptick in antisemitic statements or acts.

We must respond firmly to antisemitism, and we must simultaneously recognize the goodness of our communities and protect the principles that are vital to them.

That insight is essential in this fraught moment, when some people wrongly urge campuses to fight antisemitism by compromising their commitment to free speech.

Let me say a bit about that commitment, as a matter first of constitutional law and then of University policy.

The United States has what I regard as the most powerful protections for free speech of any nation in the world.

Those protections emanate from a principle announced by Justice Brennan in the 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan, where he wrote that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and … it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”[1]

In the sixty years since Brennan wrote that sentence, the Supreme Court has taken nearly to its logical limit the protection of “uninhibited” debate and “vehement, caustic, and … unpleasantly sharp attacks,” and not just on public figures.

Perhaps the starkest example is the 2011 decision in Snyder v. Phelps. The case dealt with the Westboro Baptist Church which picketed military funerals and directed cruel, homophobic slurs at the families of fallen soldiers. The church thereby generated free publicity for its hateful antipathy toward gay rights.

By an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court held that this speech was constitutionally protected. 

Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged the pain caused by the Church’s cruel speech, but he said that “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”[2]

American free speech law presupposes that the harms of censorship are worse than the harms caused by “vehement, caustic, unpleasantly sharp” or cruel speech.

Our constitutional doctrine presupposes that even well-intentioned censors have a tendency to suppress speech unnecessarily, and it recognizes that censors are not always well-intentioned, even in democracies.

I agree with those judgments. In my view, censorship has a lousy track record.

As a private institution, Princeton University is free to depart from the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. We could, if we wished, take a more restrictive attitude toward hurtful speech.

Because free speech is the lifeblood of a great research university, however, we have chosen a path very much like the one taken by the United States Supreme Court.

Princeton promises its students and its faculty “the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.”

We explicitly affirm that the University should not “attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”

Princeton also steadfastly protects academic freedom, which gives professors enormous latitude about what they say in their articles and what they assign for their classes.

Of course, as I say to students at the beginning of each academic year, free speech is not an end in itself.

Free speech is necessary to what a university does, but it is in no way sufficient to create the kinds of conversations and discussions upon which our teaching and research depend.

If people shout at and disparage one another, there is plenty of free speech but not much learning.

Research and education require not only that we speak, but that we listen and learn from one another.

Justice Louis Brandeis, America’s first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and one of this country’s greatest justices, said that the First Amendment was written for a people who were “courageous, self-reliant” and “confident in the power of free and fearless reasoning.”

I agree with Justice Brandeis that free speech presupposes courage and self-reliance, and I would add that it also requires several other qualities, including mutual respect, empathy, and careful listening.

A society committed to free speech must teach these virtues, in its colleges and universities and elsewhere.

What we ought not to do, what we cannot do, is to censor the speech that we hate.

As I said earlier, we must recognize the goodness of our communities and protect the principles that are vital to them.

I will close with one further reflection about antisemitism, past and present, and how we might respond to it.

Last month, I had an opportunity to get a personal tour, led by historians Danny Greene and Lisa Leff, of a special exhibition on “Americans and the Holocaust” at the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum. 

It is a fascinating exhibition, and I recommend it to you if you have not seen it (there is a good online version available if you cannot get to Washington).

Among the many interesting facts in the exhibit, I was riveted by this one: in 1938, 94 percent of Americans said that the Nazi treatment of Jews was wrong, but nevertheless 71 percent of Americans opposed allowing more Jewish exiles into the United States.

This pattern recurs throughout World War II and afterward.

Americans understood that Jews were being persecuted, but they refused to allow more refugees into the country.

Imagine how many lives might have been saved if more visas were granted.

The public’s opposition to doing so was no doubt attributable in part to antisemitism.

It was also partly attributable to a more general anti-immigrant sentiment.

Imagine how many lives might be saved today if more visas were granted to refugees desperately seeking safety in the United States.

I left the exhibition at the Holocaust Museum with these thoughts, which I offer for your consideration today:

Certainly, we must all stand up and speak out forcefully against antisemitism. Indeed, we should stand against hatred of all kinds.

At the same time, we should remember not only what we stand against but what we stand for.

We should welcome the stranger.

We should recognize the essential dignity of each individual human being.

We should do what we can to repair the world.

We should recognize the goodness at the heart of our communities, protect the principles that are vital to them, and push ourselves to be ever more faithful to our highest aspirations.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you, and I look forward to taking your questions.

[1]376 U.S. at 270.

[2] 562 U.S. at 460-61.