BY JOHN K. WILSON

On March 27, 2024, Texas governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order compelling “all Texas higher education institutions” to “update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution,” ensure that “groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies,” and formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism “in university free speech policies to guide university personnel and students on what constitutes antisemitic speech.”

This is an extraordinary act of repression. The governor is demanding that colleges change their speech policies and impose “expulsion” to punish “antisemitic speech.” Abbott names specific pro-Palestinian groups he demands must be “disciplined.” And by requiring the IHRA definition, which includes criticism of Israel as a form of antisemitism, Abbott is compelling colleges to suppress a wide range of protected free speech.

The preamble to the executive order lists “unacceptable actions on university campuses,” stating that “multiple protests and walkouts have been staged by universities’ student organizations, with students chanting antisemitic phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’”

Although Abbott’s focus is on suppressing the speech of students, the demand to update “free speech policies” and punish violators would also apply to faculty and staff. Requiring the adoption of the deeply flawed IHRA definition in “free speech policies” would limit speech across a wide range of different policies. By defining some criticism of Israel’s government as antisemitic, and then banning antisemitism, Abbott’s order will suppress political speech.

Abbott’s order declares, “Antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish students have no place on Texas university campuses and will not be tolerated by my administration.” While harassment has no place, universities (and politicians) are obligated to tolerate antisemitism (along with racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobic, and other hateful ideas). It’s notable that no university policy includes a definition of racism or other forms of bigotry. These policies certainly don’t define racism to include political views such as criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Abbott’s order compels all public universities in Texas to change their policies within the next ninety days to meet his demands. Colleges are not allowed to simply confirm that they already protect people from antisemitic harassment; they are compelled to alter their policies in some way. Abbott ordered that colleges must provide “documentation verifying revisions made to free speech policies and evidence that those polices [sic] are being enforced.” There’s quite a Freudian slip in Abbott’s typo of “polices” rather than “policies” because policing free speech to suppress criticism of Israel is the goal.

And it’s not enough for colleges to merely change their policies to violate the First Amendment. To meet the demands of Abbott’s executive order, colleges have only three months to radically alter their policies in unspecified ways and then must provide “evidence” of the policies “being enforced” in the middle of summer break, even if no one is violating them.

As FIRE noted, “By chilling campus speech, the executive order threatens to sabotage the transformative power of debate and discussion.” The substance of Abbott’s order is a clear threat to free speech, since it is explicitly aimed at restricting free speech in order to suppress views disliked by the governor. But the process is also a threat to academic freedom. When university policies are dictated by the executive order of politicians, rather than being developed through a system of shared governance, it endangers the freedom public universities must have from political control.

John K. Wilson is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies and the forthcoming book The Attack on Academia.