Category Archives: Freedom of speech and expression

Jefferson Council Resolution on the Safety and Rights of Jews at UVa


Jefferson Council President Tom Neale has delivered the following resolution of the Council to University of Virginia president Jim Ryan and the Board of Visitors. — JAB


The Jefferson Council, by unanimous agreement of the Officers, Committee Chairs and Board of Advisors, hereby issues the following RESOLUTION supporting the rights of the Jewish students, faculty and staff at the University of Virginia to study, teach and work in safety and in an environment conducive to the free and civil exchange of ideas.

WHEREAS, the Jefferson Council was founded to promote an academic environment based on open dialogue throughout the University;

WHEREAS, on October 7, 2023, military units of Hamas, the de facto governing body of Gaza, invaded the sovereign state of Israel and intentionally targeted, murdered, tortured and/or captured approximately 1400 innocent civilians including but not limited to women, children and the elderly, all in violation of international law and the moral norms of every civilized country in the world; Continue reading

Strengthening Free Speech at UVa: Part I

Mary Kate Cary. Photo credit: The Miller Center

Mary Kate Cary, a former presidential speech writer, teaches politics at the University of Virginia and is director of Think Again, a program promoting free speech and viewpoint diversity. Addressing the Colonnade Club Oct. 12, she discussed the state of free speech at UVA and what can be done to improve it. The Jefferson Council is pleased to republish a transcript of that speech, originally published at Think Again. We have divided it into two parts, the first of which appears here. — JAB


I’m different from other faculty here at the University of Virginia: I’m an out-of-the-closet conservative who has parachuted into academia. A former White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, I started teaching as an adjunct professor here in 2019. In my Political Speechwriting class, my students are mostly fourth-years interested in learning persuasion and rhetoric. The class is an elective, so they self-select me … and since the waitlist is long, I select best ones from among those who have applied. I realize that’s unusual.

And I tell my students something unusual: that they will not be graded on their political views, only on their ability to deliver a well-structured, factually accurate, persuasive speech whether I agree with them or not. That shouldn’t be unusual, but it is.

I know that because the students tell me it’s unusual. Many of them have told me privately that in most of their classes — especially humanities classes — they know what they need to say to get an A. While I’m a conservative, I can tell you that some of my highest performing students have political views very different from mine. I always try to make sure I’m grading on persuasive ability, not political views. Continue reading

Updates on the Pro-Palestinian Protests

Pro-Palestinian protesters. Image credit: The Jefferson Independent.

More coverage of last week’s pro-Hamas demonstration at the University of Virginia comes from The Jefferson Independent and The Cavalier Daily. The Independent’s Peter McHugh provides a vivid  description of events, such as dueling flags — Israel’s versus Palestinian — on the steps of the Rotunda. Crying, “This is our space!” the pro-Palestinian demonstrators scuffled with the Jewish students in an unsuccessful bid to remove their banner.

McHugh also takes note of a communication from the Provost’s office to faculty members that stated, “While the university is aware that a number of student organizations are planning a walkout at 12:30 tomorrow, we are not canceling classes and expect that instruction will continue as scheduled.”

At least one professor, Mack Gregg of the English department, ended class at 12:30 and urged students to attend the walkout demonstration, two students told McHugh. The Independent tried to contact Gregg for a response but got no reply. Continue reading

In Defense of Painful Free Speech

by Allan Stam

The horrific attacks of October 7th on Jews in Israel have prompted pro-Palestinian groups, including several at UVA, to rally in support of Hamas. In recent days, we have heard growing calls for support of Palestinians and condemnation of Israel as the Israeli Defense Forces and Iran’s proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Allah (the Houthi movement in Yemen) wage the most significant war in and around Israel in years. This is a war precipitated solely by Hamas’ surprise terror attack of unprecedented scale and proportion on unarmed Israeli civilians.

A common theme across the statements of pro-Palestinian groups and many university administrators and faculty is an explicit or implicit assertion of some moral equivalence between the suffering of human shields in Gaza and the victims of barbaric terror attacks in Israel. The linguistic turn that Hamas’ apologists employ most commonly is the ‘yes, but…’ device.

Some responded to these abhorrent statements with calls to restrict free speech, to sanction the terrorists’ enablers formally, and to quell somehow this pruriently hateful speech. I disagree. Most vehemently. Let the antisemites have their say. Why? Because now we know with certainty what they believe and how they genuinely feel about others in our community.

The downside of strict censorship is uncertainty about peoples’ actual beliefs. For example, by making the use of the n-word utterly forbidden, we protect the sensibilities of Black people who would suffer, at a minimum, great offense and possibly some genuine harm. However, the cost of that protection is that it enhances the ability of the faithful or casual racists to hide in our midst. Continue reading

Crime and Punishment in Charlottesville

by James C. Sherlock

UVa and Harvard are the two campuses most often cited by the national and world press as homes to the worst actors after October 7.

It is easy work.

I posted a column on Saturday making a series of recommendations for actions by the University of Virginia to protect its Jewish community and rid itself of those that threaten it.

That was my response to the infamous support of UVa-funded organizations for the slaughter of innocents in Israel by Hamas, a group designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Kill Jews “by any means necessary” they wrote.

Read the column. I named them.

Now I have been told by the Executive Director of Hillel at UVa, Rabbi Jake Rubin, that the President’s office and local law enforcement “have been incredibly responsive, helpful, and present during this difficult time.”

Good start, and Virginians thank them for it, but it does not answer the questions about enforcement of state and federal laws.

So, there is more to do. Continue reading

Free Speech and Advocacy of Genocide

by James A. Bacon

Chanting “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,” hundreds of pro-Palestinian students held a protest on the Lawn at the University of Virginia yesterday. As reported by the Washington Free-Beacon, they demanded the Biden administration defund aid to Israel. The event was part of a national “walkout” organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, and the second demonstration in Charlottesville since Hamas unleashed a wave of terrorist attacks on Israel earlier this month.

“We, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), are sickened by the on-going, escalating genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist forces,” said the organizing group in a formal statement signed by two dozen other leftist student groups in the aftermath of the Hamas assault. “We stand in solidarity with Palestinians in the fight for liberation and in their struggle against settler colonialism.” 

While the protesters were not explicit about their ultimate aim, the slogan “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” can mean only one thing: the eradication of the Israeli state and the dispossession — or worse — of the Jews within it. Hamas’ slaughter of innocents in its wave of terrorist attacks earlier this month foreshadows the likely fate of the Jewish population should Hamas carry the day.

Even Adolph Hitler did not call for the extermination of the Jews in his anti-Semitic tract, “Mein Kampf.” Even the senior Nazis attending the Wansee Conference to organize the “final solution” for the Jews spoke in euphemisms and knew that their program was too gruesome to reveal to the German people. Hamas is far more open about its aims. The genocidal impulse is all too clear. Continue reading

“Hate” Speech Does Not Make Students “Unsafe”

Scene from “Clockwork Orange”

by James A. Bacon

There is a widespread notion among militant leftists at the University of Virginia, as there is in universities across the Commonwealth, that exposure to objectionable ideas causes “harm” to those who hear them and, thus, should be suppressed. This logic is a totalitarian wolf in sheep’s clothing. While I do not countenance the banning of speech — even the speech of those who would happily ban mine — I do believe this leftist trope must be combatted forcefully in the marketplace of ideas.

We observed this thinking in the run-up to the speech by Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” which highlights the role of social contagion in the spread of transgender identity among teenage girls and the potentially irreversible damage of hormone treatments and sex-change surgery.

Shrier is Public Enemy No. 1 to transgender activists, and their social media accounts lit up once word got out that the Jefferson Council and its partners were hosting a Q&A event with her on the Grounds. I won’t bore you with the serial misrepresentations of Shrier as a transphobe and a hater. Rather, my intent here is to explore the logic that speakers with views like hers are unwelcome at UVa. 

“Unfortunately, knowing that the university is OK w allowing hateful ppl to come to this school (pence, pompeo, other hateful republicans) it is clear that ‘free speech’ and ‘bipartisanship’ is valued over the safety of their students,” messaged one writer in a QSU (Queer Student Union) account. (My bold face.) Continue reading

A New Form of Antisemitism Surfaces in Charlottesville

Anna Kriebel, a third-year student in the University of Virginia’s Political Philosophy, Policy and Law program, has had a column published in National Review. She describes the dehumanizing, anti-Israeli rhetoric of the pro-Palestinian students at UVa, and contrasts it with the timid defense of Israel by Jewish students unwilling to sign their names to a column in the Cavalier Daily newspaper. We can replicate the first few paragraphs here, but you’ll have to visit the National Review website to read the whole thing. — JAB

The dehumanizing rhetoric of a student group at the University of Virginia flies in the face of the school’s Jeffersonian principles.

Six years after Unite the Right, an insidious new brand of antisemitism has taken hold in Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia. Shortly after Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel, the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UVA released a statement declaring its unequivocal support for resistance “by whatever means they deem necessary.” In essence, it justified the slaughter of Israeli civilians.

I sympathize with those experiencing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and don’t pretend to condone every military decision made by Israel, the United States, or any other country, for that matter. However, I am deeply unsettled by the antisemitic implications of many of my peers’ statements, as well as their attempts to stifle free discourse. Read the whole thing.

“Seeking a Better World” by Defending the Beheaders of Babies

by James A. Bacon

A week ago the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA created a furor by publishing a statement defending Hamas’ attack on Israel. “Yesterday’s rebellion was not ‘unprovoked,’ as many have claimed, but is the consequence of years of mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and oppression from Israel,” the group wrote. “The events that took place yesterday [October 7] are a step towards a free Palestine. … We stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance fighters and all oppressed people around the world seeking freedom and a better world.”

The same group organized a demonstration yesterday at the steps of the Rotunda in the shadow of the statue of Thomas Jefferson. I made a point of attending to hear what the protesters had to say and observe what transpired. I had one major question: Who were these people? What kind of person living in free society could defend the atrocities perpetrated upon Israeli civilians of all ages? What could they possibly be thinking?

As executive director of the Jefferson Council, which is dedicated among other things to free speech and free inquiry at UVa, I supported the right of the pro-Palestinians to hold their rally and make their case. But the Council also stands for viewpoint diversity, which is under threat from the steady leftward drift of the faculty and staff and the slow extinction of professors openly professing conservative, libertarian and independent views. While the far left is a distinct minority at UVa, it is a highly vocal and influential one. How representative, I wanted to know, were the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA? Continue reading

The Jefferson Independent on Hamas Terrorism

The Jefferson Independent has published an excellent editorial on how the Hamas attack on Israel is playing out at the University of Virginia. The author wrestles with the conflict between his commitment to free speech and intellectual diversity and his condemnation of those at UVa who justify unspeakable evil. — JAB

Hamas and Their Heinous Crimes Must Be Condemned

On October 7th, 50 years after the start of the Yom Kippur War, the Islamist militant group Hamas violently attacked Israel without provocation. Over 1,000 terrorists crossed the border, backed by airstrikes from the Gaza Strip. Recent reports reveal over 900 reported deaths and 2,600 injured, per Israeli authorities. As an Editorial Board, The Jefferson Independent wholeheartedly denounces any form of violence, irrespective of the perpetrator. We wish for nothing more than a swift and diplomatic end to this tragedy.

However, the manner in which this conflict is being fought must be illuminated and condemned. By now, many have read of the countless atrocities committed in the last four days. Make no mistake, this is not solely a targeted military operation. Hamas terrorists are murdering innocent civilians in cold blood, kidnapping children, and parading beaten victims as trophies in the street. Most disgustingly, recent IDF reports claim that Israeli soldiers discovered slaughtered babies in Kfar Azza, one of the last villages captured by Hamas. The brutal yet frivolous behavior on display as they ruthlessly murder women, children, and senior citizens is a level of hatred only rivaled by the Holocaust.

Aren’t people rushing to condemn acts of terrorism? Who could support such horrible atrocities? It turns out there are groups at universities all over Europe, the United States, and even our very own UVA who seem to believe these actions are completely justified.

Read the whole editorial here.