Opinion: Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now; Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2023

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, Los Angeles Times; Opinion: Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now

"Students have the right to say very offensive and even hateful things, but school administrators — deans, presidents and chancellors — have free speech rights too. They must exercise them and take a stand even if it will offend some and subject them to criticism.

It is a very difficult time on campuses across the country. Many of our students and faculty members have family and friends in Israel or in Gaza. Many care deeply about the suffering we are seeing, and yet there is no bridge between those who seek the elimination of Israel and those who believe it is essential to have a Jewish state. I hope there will be a time when campus officials can find ways to bring their communities together. But it is not realistic now. This makes it all the more important that they show moral leadership and speak out against the antisemitism that is rampant now, as they would condemn all other forms of racism and hate on campus.

Erwin Chemerinsky is a contributing writer to Opinion and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. His latest book is “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”

Exclusive: X-Men's Chris Claremont talks through five key storylines; Empire, 4/6/16

Dorian Lynskey, Empire; Exclusive: X-Men's Chris Claremont talks through five key storylines:

"A major theme of your X-Men stories was using mutants as a metaphor for other persecuted groups. Where did that idea come from?

I went to Israel for two months in 1970 and worked on a kibbutz. It affected me on levels that I hadn’t anticipated, working on a daily basis with people who were actual survivors of the Holocaust. You’d see military patrols going by every day. We would have armed volunteers walking around the property all night. It brought home international conflicts on a very personal level.

With the X-Men, were you thinking only of antisemitism or racism and homophobia as well?

It was blended in. There’s a lot of talk online now that Magneto stands in for Malcolm X and Xavier stands in for Martin Luther King, which is totally valid but for me, being an immigrant white (Claremont was born in England), to make that analogy felt incredibly presumptuous. An equivalent analogy could be made to [Israeli prime minister] Menachem Begin as Magneto, evolving through his life from a terrorist in 1947 to a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 30 years later. That evolution was something I wanted to apply to the relationship between Xavier and Magneto. It’s an evolving 150-issue arc: Magneto’s resurrection as an angry, anti-human, pro-mutant terrorist. In #150 he lashes out and the person that gets hit is Kitty Pryde, a 13-year-old kid. His shattering realisation is: "What kind of monster have I become? Has what the Nazis did to me in the Shoah made me a Nazi?" Ultimately, my goal for the character was that he would come full circle and become Xavier’s heir, as headmaster of the school and leader of team. For me he was a much more fascinating character because of his flaws and there was always a risk that he might fall from grace...

Of course, you took the idea of mutants facing genocidal hatred to extremes with Days of Future Past (X-Men #141-142), where mutants are outlawed and murdered by the Sentinels…

The idea was to show our heroes why their fight is so necessary. There is a tragic cost to failure. The line we always used to describe these characters was ‘feared and hated by the world they are sworn to protect’. Their struggle is not simply to defeat the bad guys; it is to establish themselves as credible, honourable fellow citizens of the planet. The idea with Days Of Future Past was this is what’s lying in wait if you falter. If you ever needed a reason to try and try again, this is it."