Harvard graduate: No hate speech laws

AlArabiya English

Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum says the US shouldn’t outlaw hate speech, even antisemitic, Islamophobic, racist, or sexist remarks.

Transcript

00:00Let's bring in Shabos. Shabos, respond to what both of our guests there have been debating about.

00:05Talk us through it. What's your point of view?

00:11Sure, but first I need to make a broad point.

00:15There's only one professor on this panel, and it's a professor who keeps interrupting.

00:19I mean, this is why higher education is so few of these days.

00:22I'm going to interrupt and say I'm not a professor.

00:23Viewers need to hear three distinct perspectives. That is their right.

00:26And we can't do it if people...

00:28Thank you for proving my point.

00:33You need to listen to other people and have basic respect.

00:36And if you don't want to agree with me, fine, but just stop interrupting.

00:38It's like childish. It's just childish.

00:42This is why young people are just so fed up with these institutions.

00:45Just stop interrupting. Jesus.

00:47So here's the point. I couldn't agree with Destiny more.

00:49There should not be hate speech laws.

00:52Anti-Semitism is constitutionally protected speech.

00:54Islamophobia is constitutionally protected speech.

00:56Racist speech. Sexist speech. It's abhorrent.

00:58I condemn it, of course, but it's protected.

01:00Jewish students, myself included, are not asking for special treatment under the law.

01:04We're asking for equal treatment under the law.

01:06And Destiny brought up this point of there should be criminal proceedings, and that's actually what we're doing.

01:10So we filed a lawsuit against Harvard last year.

01:12It's the first lawsuit in American history pertaining to the civil rights violations of Jewish students on a college campus to actually go to trial.

01:18Harvard filed two separate motions to dismiss, and that was rejected.

01:22In fact, the judge, Judge Richard Stearns, even wrote that it would be dubious for Harvard to try to hide under the First Amendment

01:28when almost everything we were entailing had nothing to do with speech, and it had everything to do with criminality.

01:33It had everything to do with action.

01:34It had everything to do with action.

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