Another win for the pro-BDS crowd on college campuses.

A debate urging the adoption of the the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism has been squashed in favor of a broader discussion on tolerance at the University of California.

This is Salon’s side of the story:

A win for activists in University of California’s anti-Semitism debate

For a while it looked like on July 23 the regents of the University of California were going to adopt the U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism and in some fashion or another put policies into place that would have a severe impact on what can and cannot be said about Israel on each of the 10 U.C. campuses, which together enroll some 230,000 students. Those students, along with 190,000 faculty and staff, would all be constrained under the regents’ interpretation of the definition.

The decision would in fact be continuing a process that began in 2012, when the California House passed a resolution condemning anti-Semitism (HR35), and continued into this past spring, when the Senate passed a similar resolution (SCR35). The stage was set, the momentum was there, activists and advocates on both sides were ready to march on the regents meeting in San Francisco and address the regents and U.C. president Janet Napolitano.

But just before the regents were to meet, it was announced that they had decided to drop the matter entirely and instead to have a discussion about “tolerance” in general at their meeting in the autumn. This is a tremendous victory for all those who criticized the possible use of the State Department definition of anti-Semitism, and we can learn a lot by tracing the path of activism, critique and protest that produced this result.