University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee is one of the latest schools with a free-speech imbroglio

Joel Berkowitz was outraged when a University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee student held a sign bearing a swastika and a hateful message directed at students celebrating Israel’s independence: “Gas,” the sign said.

But Berkowitz, who runs the school’s Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies, was also angered with the university’s response. He felt a statement from the school’s chancellor, Mark Mone, defending the student’s right to free speech failed to condemn strongly enough the hateful message.

“The University’s initial response was shockingly weak,” Berkowitz wrote on his campus blog.

And so began a conversation, in private and in public, with echoes on college campuses throughout the nation. College administrators are searching for ways to balance First Amendment rights with the right of students and faculty to feel secure. They’re not always finding the right mix.

“They weren’t even denouncing a swastika in the middle of campus,” Berkowitz said in an interview.

Yet Berkowitz, whose family includes Holocaust victims and survivors, acknowledged the difficulty of honoring the principles of open discourse and respecting dissent that pushes the limits of decency. Shouldn’t limits be placed on speech so repugnant — gas the Jews — that it implies a threat of violence, he wonders?

“No one that I’m talking to is saying that we should ride roughshod over the First Amendment,” Berkowitz said. “But there are discussions about what are the limits of free speech. They are not absolute.”

The university’s chancellor has issued two public statements since the May 6 protest, while more than 1,400 people have signed an online petition urging the school to expel the sign-holding student. Efforts to reach that student for comment through email and social media accounts were not successful.

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