Does Boulder attack on Jews mark new front in ‘war on free speech’?

It was getting so hard to talk in Boulder that Hilary Kalisman, a university professor, worried that vitriol over Gaza would end in violence.

City Council meetings had become heated, and chants, to some, felt threatening. Professor Kalisman, who teaches Jewish history at the University of Colorado Boulder, had felt the blowback herself. A practicing Jew, she has been called an antisemite for allowing words like “genocide” and “apartheid” in discussions.

On Sunday, at the beginning of the Jewish holiday Shavuot, Dr. Kalisman prepared to participate in a synagogue panel aimed to defuse the tension. The session – “Building a New Language for Israel/Palestine After Oct. 7” – never happened.