By KRISTINA HARRIGAN 
Class of 1978
Harvard Law School

The ACLU “Gov’s dangerous executive order could silence protected speech in New Mexico” (link) warns that the Governor’s Executive Order’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism, adopted by the Federal Government and over 40 countries around the world, threatens Constitutionally protected free speech.

This is a blatant misrepresentation.

The Order does not aim at speech but at acts that accompany the speech. Its purpose is to determine whether an act that, on its own, violates the law is also a “hate crime.” Thus, for example, assaulting a person is unlawful. Assault while chanting “death to Israel” makes the assault an antisemitic “hate crime.”

This definition of antisemitism no more violates the First Amendment than the multiple definitions of sexist speech, racist speech, homophobic speech and so on. The ACLU’s focus on this one definition of “hate speech” shows how necessary the definition is. The ACLU applies a unique and hostile standard to a matter affecting only Jews — classic antisemitism as defined by the Order.