Curbing Antisemitic Pro-Terror Protests Now Labeled “McCarthyism”

Janet Levy writes, Georgetown Law School students petitioned against having a Jewish economist speak at their commencement – 42% of the graduating class (282/670). The speaker was replaced by a pro-Palestinian law professor who, soon after the October 7th Massacre, criticized the ADL and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights for calling to “investigate, disband, or penalize pro-Palestinian student groups for exercising their free speech rights.”

Obviously, violent protests and the intimidation of Jewish students and professors on campus do not fall under the umbrella of First Amendment protections for expressing an opinion, however odious.

This announcement follows an event at Berkeley Law School, where students cheered a Palestinian suicide bomber invited to speak, and a commencement speaker at the University of Michigan who praised pro-Palestinian protesters.

Photo above: Illustrative: Antisemitic protesters march through the Georgetown.

Georgetown Law graduation speaker backs out after students protest his ‘Zionist opinions’

University replaces Morton Schapiro with a speaker who compared congressional hearings on campus antisemitism to ‘McCarthyism,’ decried efforts to curb anti-Israel student protests

By Jackie Hajdenberg, Times of Israel, 7 May 2026:

JTA — A pro-Israel Jewish economist and former university president will no longer speak at Georgetown University Law School’s graduation next week, after stepping down from the speaking engagement following student criticism.

Instead, graduating students and their families will hear from a Georgetown professor who has disparaged legal efforts to curb pro-Palestinian student protests and compared congressional hearings on college campus antisemitism to “McCarthyism.”

The school announced last week that Morton Schapiro, who led Northwestern University for a decade until 2022, would be the commencement speaker on May 17. Students soon launched a petition calling for his removal.

“Schapiro is not a lawyer, has no connection to Georgetown, and holds controversial, Zionist, and harmful opinions,” said the petition, which drew 282 signatures.

The petition called attention to a column that Schapiro published last year in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, where he now lives. In the column, titled “What I Have Learned Over the Past Two Years About Israel and the World” and published on October 15, Schapiro criticized progressives, higher education leaders and the mainstream media for vilifying Israel during the war in Gaza.

The petition also linked to a news story about Schapiro’s 2020 comments disparaging student protesters at Northwestern. At the time, he was clashing with students who called him “Piggy Morty,” an epithet that they said was meant to criticize his ties to police but that he said smacked of antisemitism.

Georgetown Law did not comment publicly on the petition until Wednesday, when Interim Dean Joshua Teitelbaum, who had been Schapiro’s student at Williams College, announced by email that Schapiro had withdrawn from the speaking role. Teitelbaum noted in the email, sent to the Georgetown Law community, that “in the past week, a number of law students raised concerns” about Schapiro’s selection.

“He was invited to address the graduating class to share his insights about the current moment in US higher education and to inspire our graduates to pursue a life’s work in service of others,” Teitelbaum said in the email, which Georgetown Law School shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.