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Last night an event called “Zionism & The New McCarthyism: A Conversation with Bruce Robbins” took place in Champaign-Urbana. It was a canceled University of Illinois event that was rescheduled as an independent event, without university support. Bruce Robbins’s short documentary, Some of My Best Friends are Zionists, interviews influential Jews such as Judith Butler and Tony Kushner who discuss the repression of anti-Zionist viewpoints. His talk addressed the rise of a “new McCarthyism” on college campuses which threatens to shut down criticism of Israel under the guise of “civility.” Respondents included myself, Jodi Byrd (Professor in American Indian Studies) and Bruce Levine (Professor of History). My comments were as follows: