Amid national wave of Israel-Hamas war protests, Columbia Democrat thinks SC colleges could use definition in weighing responses
By Jessica Holdman
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — South Carolina universities have not seen anything akin to the wave of protests over the Israel-Hamas war sweeping college campuses across the country.
There are no students pitching massive tent encampments on campus lawns, refusing to leave. No vandalizing or taking over of academic buildings. And no reports of insults, harassment or threats of violence aimed at Jewish students.
Still, as students finish final exams and campuses empty for the summer, lawmakers point to a bill codifying a definition of antisemitism into state law. The House gave final approval last week.
The state’s only Jewish legislator believes the bill heading to Gov. Henry McMaster’s desk could be used by South Carolina’s public universities in deciding how to respond should troubling instances or conduct violations arise with staff or students in the future.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Columbia, would use the same definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the U.S. State Department.
Student-led, pro-Palestinian protests have spread nationwide in response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. War erupted between Israel and Palestine after Hamas militants launched an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 civilians and taking some 250 hostages. Israel has since killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.
Bernstein said she was disturbed by chants of “go back to Poland” reported at Columbia University in New York. (Poland’s Jewish community was largely wiped out by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust.) And at Northwestern University in Illinois, where Jewish students are suing the school over its handling of protests, a student was called a “dirty Jew” and protest signs depicted a Star of David crossed through and the school’s president, who is Jewish, as a “bloodthirsty devil.”
Bernstein, who is 54, said she has never seen this amount of hate directed at Jews in her lifetime.
For the Columbia lawmaker, it’s personal. With two daughters of her own, one of whom is a student at Tulane University in Louisiana — where there’s been extensive protests — she’s afraid for their safety and that of other young Jewish students.
She said she worries about continuous harassment of those students by protesters as they walk to class.
“They’re being ostracized,” Bernstein said. “Jews are being attacked just because they’re Jewish.
While supporters of Israel have called out the university protests as antisemitic, protest organizers say the antisemitic remarks of some do not reflect the views of the whole, which condemns the humanitarian crisis the conflict has led to in Gaza. Critics say those allegations are being used to silence the student movement.
Protests in SC
Out of South Carolina’s largest college campuses, only one — the University of South Carolina — has reported minor protest activity.
After the Oct. 7 attack, a revived USC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine distributed posters and leaflets on campus. And supporters of Palestine stood silently with protest signs at a vigil for Columbia’s Jewish community, held at the Anne Frank Center on campus. Blocks away at the Statehouse, protesters at a “free Palestine” rally organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation chanted and held signs, while a small group of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered across the street.
Bernstein, who attended the vigil, said the pro-Palestine protesters were “maybe a tad bit disruptive, but not violent.”
Most recently, a late-afternoon demonstration was held between the university’s main library and student center on the last day of classes, which coincided with the first day of Jewish Passover. Unlike elsewhere in the country, the students left at dusk, The Post and Courier reported.
Then, at the university’s “midnight breakfast” event signaling the start of exams, about a dozen protesters carrying Palestinian flags and chanting stood for about 30 minutes at the entrance of the dining area of the school’s student center as students and staff passed through to the event, according to a police report from university police. They stayed after staff asked them to leave. The police report did not mention any threats or physical acts of violence.
When the group did move, police followed them outside and the students ran away in different directions. Police saw two of the students walking on Sumter Street and arrested them for breach of peace, a misdemeanor.
Police crackdown
Across the country, by comparison, police have reported more than 2,000 arrests.
Tent encampments of protesters have spread across the country, mirroring one that formed at Columbia University in New York nearly two weeks ago. As the movement has drug on, universities are cracking down, calling in police.
At Columbia, police cleared the tent encampment on the school’s grounds and an academic building overtaken by protesters at the Ivy League school about 20 hours earlier. The protest movement at the school also made national headlines last week after one of the organizers posted a video online encouraging violence on Jews.
“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” the student, Khymani James, said in video taken in January. “I feel very comfortable − very comfortable − calling for those people to die.”
Opposing groups of protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles, broke out in fistfights, with students from both groups kicking and beating each other with sticks. And at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, police in riot gear shut down an encampment, arresting about 20 people for trespassing.
Meanwhile, antisemitism and Islamophobia in the United States has surged to record levels since the Oct. 7 Hamas’ attack, according to the Anti-Defamation League and Council on American-Islamic Relations.
In its most recent report, the Anti-Defamation League said there were 85 incidents — 78 cases of harassment and seven acts of vandalism — of antisemitism in South Carolina in 2023, nearly double the number reported the year before and more than five times the number reported in 2021.
Former state Sen. Joel Lourie, who is Jewish and now sits on the board of the regional Anti-Defamation League, said he suspects antisemitic sentiments have percolated under the surface for some time.
“But what we’re seeing now is much more pronounced,” he said. “Things have escalated beyond my wildest imagination.”
Lourie said it’s one thing to exercise free speech. It’s another when demonstrations block students from going to class or studying in the library. Recent reports of students being targeted, threatened or beaten “crossed an extremely dangerous line.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations received 8,061 complaints of anti-Muslim bias incidents last year – the highest number in the 28 years the organization has tracked cases. The report does not say whether any of those complaints originated in South Carolina.
Applying the definition
Bernstein acknowledged that if her bill becomes state law, applications of what’s antisemitic would be limited to policies and regulations at state agencies, which include public universities.
“But in light of what we’re seeing on college campuses across the country, it could be used to help universities navigate any incidents if it starts to happen here in South Carolina,” she said.
The bill defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
The organization also provides modern examples of antisemitism:
- Calling for or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or extreme religious view
- Making dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews
- Holocaust denial
But critics have said some of the definition’s examples are overly broad, veering into complicated world politics:
- Claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor
- Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nations
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel
The definition does specify that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country is not antisemitic.
Lawmakers in more than a half-dozen states pushed laws adopting the definition. Georgia’s governor signed it into law in January. South Dakota did the same in March. Virginia passed it last year, and Iowa passed it in 2022.
South Carolina considered the definition multiple times in the past but this time were prompted to act.
Locally, Charleston, Greenville and Myrtle Beach have all passed resolutions with this definition.
And the U.S. House voted Wednesday to add the same definition to law that bars discrimination and harassment based on race, color or national origin at institutions that receive federal funding. This could give U.S. education regulators the ability to withhold funding from schools that allow protests to linger. The measure now heads to the Senate.
But even the definition’s author told the Associated Press he didn’t think the language should be put into law.
Congressional action
The ACLU, in an open letter, asked Congress to reject the effort, saying federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and the move could instead chill free speech by “equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”
Bernstein said it’s important not to infringe on free speech in making such laws.
“You can disagree with Israel’s policies,” she said.
But while racial slurs are often more overt, Bernstein said antisemitism can be harder to determine, making a set definition important.
Hateful speech is not illegal under the First Amendment but comments that are deemed “true threats” are not protected as free speech. A true threat is a statement that frightens or intimidates people into believing they will be seriously harmed, according to the Free Speech Center in Tennessee.
Where things become problematic, Bernstein said, is when people lay blame to Jews as a whole, whether they’re from Israel or Jewish-American, and threaten violence against them.
South Carolina’s ACLU chapter also chimed in Wednesday, reminding university leaders of the state’s own, at times troublesome, history with campus protests. Demonstrations have included Civil Rights marches, calls for desegregation and opposition to the Vietnam War.
“Students have raised their voices throughout our shared history, and administrators, government officials, and law enforcement have not always responded in ways that protected their safety and their constitutionally guaranteed rights,” the group wrote.
The group urged restraint regarding the use of law enforcement, saying they’re far more likely to escalate things and pointing to past tragedies such as the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre.
In that incident 56 years ago, an attempt by students at two historically Black colleges, South Carolina State University and Claflin University, to desegregate a whites-only bowling alley turned violent after police showed up and beat protesters. Then-Gov. Robert McNair sent in the state police and National Guard, who shot into a crowd of 200 students, killing three and wounding at least 27.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the S.C. Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
