Archive by Author: Kenneth Stern

I highly recommend this book discussed in my new Times of Israel blog post.  These excerpts from my post focus on BDS:  Jonathan Marks’s “Let’s Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education“ shows what higher education can be at its best. But his subtitle has it wrong. Marks may be a conservative, and he may […]

The following is my response to Batya Ungar-Sargon’s original article in The Forward; my piece was published as a letter to the editor: Forty-eight years ago, as a first-year student at Bard College, I saw graffito in a bathroom stall: “If I didn’t believe it with my own mind, I never would have seen it.” I saw affirmations […]

I’m a co-author of the recent Alliance for Academic Freedom critique of the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act,” and originally was the lawyer who was the lead drafter of the definition of anti-Semitism that would be codified into law should the ASAA be passed.  But I oppose the application of this definition in the proposed legislation.  This is from my 2016 […]

My article, “HOW TO COUNTER WHITE SUPREMACISTS ENERGIZED BY TRUMP,” was published in the LA Jewish Journal, August 17, 2017: The smartest graffito I ever saw proclaimed “If I didn’t believe it with my own mind, I never would have seen it.” The converse works too: deep beliefs blind people to the obvious. Maybe that […]

As a teenager I was riveted to the television coverage of the Chicago Conspiracy trial: the government’s attempt to convict Vietnam-era anti-War protestors. Defense attorney Bill Kunstler used the courtroom as political theater, and put the system – and the war – on trial. Over the decades, I’ve been involved in legal cases that have […]

That’s what is being asked of the University of California’s Board of Regents. Two dozen groups, lead by the “AMCHA Initiative,” want the regents to adopt the definition used by the U.S Department of State. UC’s president, Janet Napolitano, has endorsed the idea. Clearly there have been incidents of antisemitism on some California campuses. Some […]