One of my greatest failures—although I didn’t know it at the time—was at Columbia University. Claire Shipman, then co-chair of the Columbia board, had come across my book The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate, and in the fall of 2023 invited me to speak with the board, which was struggling with the issues the book addressed.

I wrote The Conflict over the Conflict in 2020 because I had seen people on both sides of the Israel/Palestine debate trying to stop their political opponents from speaking, harming the academy in the process. They used different means: some pro-Palestinian activists disrupted public programs and targeted Israeli academics and their institutions; some on the pro-Israel side were using legal tools, particularly what is now called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, to attack speech about Israel on campus. I was a lead drafter of the text of an antisemitism definition in 2004 that IHRA embraced and adopted over a decade later. It was never intended to be used as a de facto hate speech code (more on that below). The definition included examples relating to Israel—for example, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor; or applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation—as ways contemporary antisemitism could manifest. Many pro-Israel Jewish groups eventually weaponized the definition to suppress student speech and to go after faculty for what they said, materials included in their courses, and speakers they invited to campus.

On December 2, 2023—as it turned out, three days before the disastrous hearing at the U.S. House of Representatives where Rep. Elise Stefanik grilled the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—I spent well over an hour with the Columbia board, first with a presentation, then a very engaged, and I thought encouraging, conversation.

I began by describing my first major project as the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) antisemitism expert in 1990: how to handle antisemitism on campus. I explained that I worked with a group of college presidents, deans, and provosts—many of them Jewish—to create a manual titled “Bigotry on Campus,” which I used to train over 200 college presidents over several years.

One lesson from this project was that there shouldn’t be special rules for Jewish students (or Black students, or anyone else). To deal with antisemitism on the campus, the focus should be on what the campus must be: a place where bullying, threats, and intimidation are firmly opposed, but speech is protected. If the campus worked as it should, Jewish students would be fine.

The second lesson, which I emphasized to the Columbia board, was “thou shalt not have anything that smacks of a hate speech code.” Beyond the legal infirmities, I explained why they were bad policy. I mentioned my favorite such code, eventually declared unconstitutional, from the University of Michigan. It was premised on an observation that there were different speech interests on different areas of the campus: a classroom should have more speech protected than a dining commons or a dorm, the last more like a home. But I stressed the foolishness of such a scheme. My college experience was wonderful because discussions that started in a class frequently continued over a meal and then back at the dorm at night. Did anyone really expect a drunken college student at 2:00 am to think about where they were on campus, and thus remember what was okay to say and what wasn’t?

I told the Columbia board that that there was a larger problem with hate speech codes. Like a black hole, they sucked attention away from other things that universities can and should do to tackle bigotry on campus that are more labor-intensive but also more effective, things like surveys of students, training of staff, and encouragement of new courses and programs. I spoke about some of the specific classes and initiatives I highlighted in the last chapter of my book—including courses about Israel/Palestine, hate, academic freedom, and free speech—and why the campus should be the ideal place to have difficult discussions about divisive topics. I encouraged them to develop and expand such course offerings, and involve faculty in the process. I mentioned a course that my Bard College colleague Michelle Murray was putting together on words that were being used on campuses as rhetorical weapons (such as genocide, antisemitism, Zionism, settler colonialism, etc.), what they mean, and why people hear them differently.

I also said we’d likely see new attacks on academia from the second Trump administration, including the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism to target campus speech, as Florida’s government had used it in 2019.

In my final words to the board that day, I asked them to remember one thing: When you are considering responses to campus issues about Israel/Palestine, ask yourselves if what you propose to do is something that will increase academic freedom, be neutral, or harm it? If it increases academic freedom, that approach will get buy-in from faculty and others and will likely work. If it harms academic freedom, it will backfire.

I felt confident that day that whatever Columbia did, it would never adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. I was wrong.

The IHRA Definition—Its Origin and Early Abuse

Every day I’m thankful I’m not a university president, especially one under fire from the Trump administration. I can’t imagine how one navigates the various interests—survival of the institution; pressure from donors, alums, board members, and politicians; protection of faculty and students; and the maintenance of a campus where intellectual curiosity and emotional empathy are valued. Even at the best of times, a hostile government can cause great damage. It’s clear now, though, that the Trump administration isn’t even adhering to the normal rules, including the procedures required by Title VI in situations where antisemitism is alleged: conducting an investigation and working with the educational institution to remedy a situation. Instead, this administration simply declares a violation and freezes and claws back money. The likelihood is that, but for a settlement, these bullying tactics will eventually be declared illegal—if any university stands firm for long enough to let courts rule on them. But in the interim, knowing cases can drag out for years and that the government can go after them in other ways, administrators are in a terrible place.

Legal settlements with this administration might not settle anything. But in the process, perhaps the most important right on a campus—especially for 18- to 22-year-olds navigating what they think about the world around them—will be sacrificed. That right is the freedom to debate difficult and contentious issues, which requires the right to try on ideas that some might find offensive. It’s impossible to protect that right when people are hunting speech for draconian attacks and lawsuits. Adopting the IHRA definition makes assaults on academic freedom not only more likely to occur, but likely to succeed.

Of course, it’s not only the Trump administration and the Republican Congress hunting speech. Some on the political left have done this for years too, confusing notions of physical safety and intellectual safety, telling students what’s not okay to say, thereby telling them what’s not okay to think, thus encouraging group think. Colleges should be places that encourage students to think for themselves.

Clearly antisemitism is real, and there are too many disgusting instances where Jewish students have been bullied, threatened, and even assaulted in the aftermath of October 7. But the answer isn’t a de facto hate speech code.

The IHRA working definition of antisemitism that is being adopted as a de facto hate speech code at universities around the country was never intended to be used to determine whether speech should be disciplined. It was never intended to be used by campus administrators at all. Back at the time of the Second Intifada and the collapse of the Israel-Palestine peace process in the early 2000s, we saw then—as we see now—an increase in antisemitism when Israel is at war. In 2004, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) released a credible report about the rise in antisemitism in Europe. But the EUMC noted a problem: data collectors in different European countries didn’t have a common definition of what to include or exclude from their reports. The EUMC was right—a consistent definition would be helpful to compare the temperature of antisemitism over time and across borders. The EUMC explained it was using a temporary definition about antisemitism as a group of stereotypes about Jews, but then considered what it should do if a European was attacked as a stand-in for an Israeli. The EUMC said if the person had these stereotypes about Jews, transferred them to Israelis, and then assaulted a Jew on the streets of Europe, that should be counted as an example of antisemitism, but not if the assaulter was motivated by anger at an action of the Israeli government.

This distinction—focusing on motive rather than the intent to target a Jew because they were Jewish—was deplorable. When you hold individuals responsible for political acts of others, for example attacking Asian Americans because of the alleged actions of the Chinese government during Covid, that’s bigotry.

The leader of the EUMC came to the May 2004 AJC annual meeting to discuss antisemitism in Europe. A few weeks beforehand, a Montreal Jewish day school had been firebombed in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of a Hamas leader. I challenged the EUMC leader publicly at the meeting—according to their reasoning, the firebombing wasn’t to be counted as antisemitism. The next month, AJC began working with the EUMC to come up with a new definition, and I was the lead drafter of the definitional text. The heart of it was a series of contemporary examples of antisemitism for the bean counters. Some of the examples were about Israel. The point wasn’t to create a blunt instrument to label anyone an antisemite, and certainly not to create a campus hate speech code, but to take a societal temperature and reflect the correlation between some Israel-related expressions and the level of antisemitism.

By 2010, I started seeing the abuse of the definition on some American campuses. That year the Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague” letter, making clear that while Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addressed illegal discrimination in educational institutions, didn’t offer protection on the basis of religion, it would protect Jews (and Sikhs and Muslims) as ethnicities. I not only supported that clarification, but also used it when I filed a complaint on behalf of Jewish high school students who were being bullied (there was a “Kick a Jew day”). By working with the Department of Education, the school district in question agreed to steps to remedy the situation.

However, given this new ability to use Title VI, groups on the pro-Israel Jewish right immediately started using the text of the EUMC antisemitism definition as part of Title VI cases, alleging that readings professors assigned, speakers coming to campus, and other pure speech should be considered as a basis for Title VI complaints. They lost all those cases, and efforts to get Congress to enshrine the definition into law also failed. But in 2016 the IHRA adopted the text of the EUMC definition and rebranded it as the IHRA working definition. Various groups—including AJC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which had previously opposed using the definition for such Title VI purposes—began pushing for federal legislation that would require government agencies to consider the definition when evaluating questions of antisemitism. When those efforts failed, President Trump signed an executive order in 2019 mandating that consideration. Writing in the New York Times, Jared Kushner made clear the policy of the government: “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”

Of course the IHRA definition doesn’t state that policy in so many words, and in fact while anti-Zionism might be an expression of antisemitism, it need not be. But Zionism is a matter of politics. Can you imagine any other political position that might be associated with bigotry (for example, opposition to removing Confederate statues, to Black Lives Matter, or to affirmative action) being enshrined as part of an official government-endorsed definition of racism?

Lesson number one from the 1990 “Bigotry on Campus” program had been forgotten: there shouldn’t be special rules for Jewish students (or Black students, LGBTQ+ students, or anyone else). Focus on what will make the campus work, and Jews will be protected. But it seems lessons aren’t as important as symbols.

IHRA on Campus as Illegal Viewpoint Discrimination 

I’ve written and spoken for many years about the dangers of applying the IHRA definition in contexts that will chill speech. I’ve testified twice before the U.S. Senate and twice before the U.S. House of Representatives about it, most recently in March 2025 before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. I focused my testimony then on the damage that could be caused by an official adoption of the IHRA definition. I noted that:

In January, Harvard settled a lawsuit alleging antisemitism, agreeing to use "the IHRA definition for ... staff involved in reviewing complaints of discrimination.” That same month the OCR settled a case with George Washington University. There had been allegations of Title VI violations based on both antisemitism and anti-Palestinian animus, arising largely out of the same course. Pro-Israel groups had demanded that GW adopt the IHRA definition, but OCR did not require it (or even mention it).

This leads to an interesting thought experiment. Imagine if the GW facts had taken place at Harvard instead, and the resolution required the adoption of IHRA AND a definition of anti-Palestinian racism. There is such a definition put forth by a Canadian group. Would a professor who tweeted about Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria be open to a Title VI case if they gave a Palestinian student a bad grade? If they said the Palestinians were an “invented” people? Can each side be affected by calling for exclusive control “from the river to the sea?” If you were using these definitions as a policy in a university, they’d not only chill speech, but would clash, and in many instances [it] would be impossible to enforce one without violating the other.

And that’s the crux of the problem. First, even though Harvard professed it was only agreeing to do what the law requires, and only for disciplinary purposes, the adoption of the IHRA definition inevitably leads to the targeting of other campus speech. Former Harvard president Larry Summers, for example, cited the IHRA definition to criticize a Harvard academic panel.

Second, imagine if pro-Palestinian groups demanded equal treatment and adoption of a set definition of anti-Palestinianism. How, exactly, could the two definitions be applied? They both reflect political matters and refract the possibly irreconcilable national narratives of Israelis and Palestinians. We’re now also seeing advocacy groups promoting other definitions of bigotry with clear political goals, like Hinduphobia. Are campuses going to adopt such definitions, too?

Moreover, the adoption of the IHRA definition (or any such definition) is not only bad policy, but it also can constitute illegal viewpoint discrimination when used by state institutions. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) groups at various Texas universities sued Gov. Greg Abbott in 2024 over his executive order mandating the adoption of the definition in the university system, complaining about the order’s impact on their ability to speak. (The preamble to the executive order specifically targeted the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which it deemed antisemitic.  As a U.S. District Court in Texas found:

The Court finds the incorporation of this specific definition of antisemitism is viewpoint discrimination . . . Here, the characteristic of universities as an environment for vigorous debate is outcome determinative. The revised university policies chill a kind of expression that is a hallmark of university activity, and even under Tinker, the Court finds the Defendants cannot show this expression sufficiently rises to the level of a “substantial disruption” at the university level. To the contrary, this type of passionate political debate is essential at universities, where students are forming their worldview as adults… Defendants emphasize the spring protests, arguing those events are evidence that this speech is a substantial disruption. …. But the Court disagrees, finding the prohibition of this expression more akin to “a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”. . . For example, a student could calmly express she finds Israel's policies similar to that of the Nazis while seated in a classroom with her hands folded in her lap, and it could hardly be said this expression is a per se substantial disruption. Yet under UT Austin's revised policy, for example, her expression is defined as antisemitism and could be punished as “harassment . . . committed because of antisemitism.” And while some may find her speech disagreeable, offensive, or even inflammatory, it is “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment . . . that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

When another university leader asked my opinion about the IHRA definition, I told him that his institution shouldn’t incorporate the definition, even as a guide rather than a legal requirement like in Texas, because of its chilling effect on campuses. I told him that I understood that his university had to follow the law, and Trump’s executive order was in effect. However, I noted, the executive order’s requirement to “consider” the IHRA definition applied to federal government agencies. While a university’s general counsel might decide it is prudent to look at alleged instances the same way as federal agencies are directed to, they must also consider the other priorities of the institution, such as preserving academic freedom. That’s their job.

The adoption of the IHRA definition also directly conflicts with the trend in many universities to adopt some version of “institutional neutrality,” largely modeled on the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report. In the aftermath of October 7, and the criticism of university presidents for whatever they said or didn’t say (too tepid calling out Hamas’ atrocities, insufficient recognition of Palestinian suffering), many universities have moved to establish institutional neutrality policies, committing not to take a stand on issues of current concern except when they directly impact the academic freedom interests of a campus. However, a university cannot adopt the IHRA definition without endorsing a specific position in a political debate. Adopting the IHRA definition not only violates the Kalven principles, it does so to the detriment of academic freedom.

How IHRA Has Been Used Against Free Speech and Harmed the Ability to Teach 

Proponents of the IHRA definition make two main arguments for its adoption. One is that to combat antisemitism, you need to define it. The other is that the IHRA definition has no impact on free speech. Both are communal talking points. Both are demonstrably wrong.

First, AJC was founded in 1906 and the ADL in 1913. I was fortunate enough to lead AJC’s antisemitism desk for a quarter century. If you look at the AJC archives, you’ll see example after example of how antisemitism was fought without an official definition.

As I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last September:

Proponents of AAA argue that you have to define antisemitism in order to tackle it. This is nonsense. . . . I don’t recall seeing it cited when Kanye West talked about going “Def Con 3” against Jews, or at Charlottesville or other contexts. It’s, however, energetically used to target speech regarding Israel. It has been deployed as a weapon to try and cancel events, both before and after the 2019 Trump Executive Order adopting the definition, including at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Indiana University, Columbia University, University of California at Berkeley, and elsewhere.

Just a few weeks ago, in early August, the Chancellor of the Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida sent an email requiring review of courses for “Antisemitism or Anti-Israel bias.” The universities were instructed to “conduct a keyword search on course descriptions and course syllabi. Any course that contains the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jews will be flagged for review.” The IHRA definition was adopted by law in Florida this past June. As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)’s Lead Counsel Tyler Coward said, “Singling out certain key words and phrases for targeted review will certainly chill speech on these important issues, and, if institutions take action against professors for including certain materials, that violates long-standing academic freedom guarantees.”

If the proponents of the IHRA definition were completely honest, they would tell you that the debate about the definition is really about how to treat pro-Palestinian speech, not antisemitism writ large. The history of the abuse of the IHRA definition demonstrates the desire is largely political—it is not so much a desire to identify antisemitism, but rather to label certain speech about Israel as antisemitic. And this effort harms our ability to identify actual antisemitism. When I ran AJC’s desk I jealously guarded the term and when it wasn’t a clear case, although I might have criticized the expression at hand, I wouldn’t use the “A” word. I wanted the word to sting. But when the pump is primed to overclassify political expressions as antisemitic, the word loses not only its bite but its meaning.

Second, proponents have turned a blind eye to these issues and other real-world impacts of the adoption of the IHRA definition on campuses. At schools around the country, complaints based on the IHRA definition have been filed in attempts to stop speech and speakers.

The United Kingdom offers a cautionary tale. It adopted the IHRA definition and applied it to campuses. An Israel Apartheid Week event planned on one campus was not allowed. Whatever one thinks of Israel Apartheid Week, it’s speech. If you don’t like it, speak against it, don’t use laws to suppress it. Disappointingly, the U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center put out a press release not only praising the cancellation but calling for universities worldwide to follow suit.

In recent years, the desire to apply the IHRA definition to penalize speech has expanded beyond the college campus. During the first Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo floated the idea of using it to declare Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch antisemitic, which would have threatened their funding. And even before the start of the second Trump administration there were clues that some leading Republicans wanted to use the IHRA definition as a filter for which organizations should be eligible for tax exempt status. This is the game plan: to use the IHRA definition as an authoritarian wedge against disfavored speech.

On its website, IHRA promotes a link to an EU handbook that calls for the application of the IHRA definition to campus speech and to the determination of which civil society groups get government funding. The handbook says the IHRA definition should be used to “support control and supervision mechanisms and to ensure that funding does not go to entities and projects that promote antisemitism.”

More recently, a special envoy in Australia issued a report calling for the use of the IHRA definition in universities and other areas of society like funding for arts, culture, and broadcasting, and threatening funding if the definition is violated. It reads like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authoritarian companion, called Project Esther, outlining how to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.

Tennessee passed a bill requiring Local Education Agencies (similar to school districts) and institutions of higher education to use the IHRA definition when addressing allegations of antisemitism on their premises. Ironically, perhaps, the lawmaker who shepherded this legislation was also the one who proposed a bill making the Bible the official book of Tennessee and promoted a bill to remove certain books from libraries. When asked what should be done with them, he said “burn them.” In Arizona, only a veto by the Democratic governor stopped a bill that would have enshrined the IHRA definition in state law, prohibited teachers from teaching or promoting antisemitism, and given parents an individual right to sue teachers for violations of this prohibition.

But it isn’t only liberals who are concerned about the free speech implications of IHRA. As I noted in my most recent Senate testimony, conservatives, including Jewish ones, have deep concerns too:

  • Bret Stephens: “Much as I hate antisemitism, I also don’t think laws against ‘hate speech,’ including against my own group, should be in federal legislation.”
  • Batya Ungar Sargon: “This country was literally founded on the idea that there should be no government reprisals for speech, including hate speech. . . . I know this view isn’t going to be popular, but to be an American is to believe that if you can’t win by convincing enough people, you don’t deserve to win.”
  • Christopher Rufo and Jenin Younes: “The second problem with the Antisemitism Awareness Act, especially for conservatives and civil libertarians, is that it operates using the same coercive and corrosive principles as DEI. The legislation codifies an ideologically charged definition of antisemitism into law, provides special protections based on group identity, and expands anti-discrimination enforcement to include constitutionally protected speech.”
  • The Cato Institute: “The problem is that the definition includes all kinds of speech, most of which is not inherently threatening. Government punishment for such speech would be a fundamental violation of First Amendment rights.”
  • The Federalist: “Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that would formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a basis for prosecuting federal antidiscrimination statutes — a move that critics such as Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman say ‘provides no actual relief for terrorized Jewish students and infringes on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.’”
  • Tablet Magazine: The freedom and successes that Jews have enjoyed in America have been due to the protections afforded by our Constitution, and the respect for individual rights that became part of our culture. The most legitimate tax we owe—to each other, to our fellow citizens, and to those who fought for our right as Americans to say whatever the fuck we want—is the work we are asked to put in, day in and day out, to protect that freedom.”

That the IHRA definition is about suppressing speech was demonstrated again during the 118th Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene voted against the proposed Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would have required the Department of Education to use the IHRA definition when enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Rep. Greene referenced the IHRA definition’s inclusion of deicide as an example of antisemitism when explaining her vote, claiming that it could make it illegal for Christians to assert that Jews killed Jesus and punish them for “believing the Gospel.” Of course the bill would not have done so, but Senator Roger Marshall also had concerns about this part of the definition and indicated that he’d support the legislation but would offer an amendment to strike this one reference. I can’t imagine a clearer demonstration that the use of IHRA in law is about targeting speech.

Well, Senator Rand Paul managed to make a clearer case. During a HELP Committee meeting’s executive session, he spoke against the bill. He mentioned he had a list of 400 Jewish-American comedians, whose remarks might violate the definition. “This one’s from Joan Rivers,” he offered. “She says, ‘I’m Jewish. I don’t work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.’”

“That’s obviously very negative,” he said, “that Jewish people think only of money and stuff, but she’s Jewish, and it’s funny or it’s not funny, and it’s just her right to make a joke.”

In all seriousness, getting back to Columbia, after it adopted the IHRA definition, Marianne Hirsch, a genocide scholar (and tenured Columbia professor) whose family were Holocaust survivors said she was considering leaving the university. With the definition in place, she said “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.” Noted Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi cancelled his Columbia course, despite an enrollment of nearly 300 students, for the same reason. An Israeli student at Columbia published an op-ed asking, “Would I be barred from agreeing with my former Prime Minister [Ehud Olmert] about contemporary Israeli policy? Would I be exempted from this policy, on account of my citizenship? If so, would my classmates without Israeli citizenship be barred from espousing these same beliefs? At what point does Columbia see agreement with Israel’s liberals and leftists as tantamount to discrimination against Jews?”

Their fears are entirely reasonable. The Trump administration will continue to hunt for campus speech about Israel it doesn’t like, then threaten, bully, and claw back more money. But the administration—and the outside actors who will continue to bring lawsuits—will now likely have a stronger case, because speech that some allege falls afoul of the IHRA definition will also be objected to as also violating Columbia’s own rules. Wary of lawsuits or whatever bullying tool from the Trump administration is next, Columbia will have an incentive to use the IHRA definition to suppress, or at least condemn, purely political speech.

When I saw Claire Shipman’s email explaining the school’s incorporation of the IHRA definition, I was hoping instead to see a list of 20 or 30 new classes that would help students understand the moment —courses about how hate works; the difference between being actually harassed or threatened, on one hand, and being disturbed by ideas, on the other; the importance of academic freedom and free speech; the intellectual basis for having deeply difficult discussions (there’s actually an AI program called Sway that is a great tool for faculty and students, which guides pairs of students through discussions of difficult and contentious topics) ; antisemitism; protest; anti-Arab animus, and so much more. What Columbia needs is more teaching, not less. And Shipman’s announcement that Columbia will bring in external advocacy groups for antisemitism trainings, rather than empowering faculty and enlisting other academics (perhaps as visiting scholars) to teach more about these subjects, suggests another surrender that will be dismissed by many as propaganda, rather than scholarly engagement.

Yet, in a news story about the Columbia genocide scholar who is considering withdrawing from teaching, Kenneth Marcus of the Brandeis Center, a Jewish legal advocacy group, applauded Columbia’s incorporation of the IHRA definition to “provide clarity, transparency and standardization” about antisemitism. “There are undoubtedly some Columbia professors who will feel they cannot continue teaching under the new regime,” Marcus said. “To the extent that they self-terminate, it may be sad for them personally, but it may not be so bad for the students at Columbia University.”

I disagree—it’s very bad. If faculty are mistreating, harassing, or discriminating against students, that’s one thing, and campuses already have many mechanisms for addressing those concerns. But proscribing opinions that do not conform to an official definition destroys academic freedom and free speech. Students can’t possibly engage with difficult topics, and try on different ideas, in that kind of environment.

The government’s efforts to compel universities to employ the IHRA definition is only a part of its assault on higher education. As a senator, JD Vance said he wanted to attack universities just as Viktor Orbán did in Hungary (the Central European University, a Bard-affiliated school, was forced out and had to reconstitute in Vienna). Project 2025 and Project Esther are both efforts to make universities toe an ideological line that isn’t self-directed by faculty but imposed by government edict. Despite the shortcomings and lack of ideological diversity in some corners of academia, faculty governance is absolutely essential to academic freedom. Antisemitism, while real, is being used as a political tool for those with a larger agenda—one that is dangerous to American Jews. American Jews have been least secure in times of authoritarian attacks on speech like the McCarthy period.

To my great chagrin, most Jewish organizations and leaders, with some notable exceptions, have cheered on the Trump administration’s assault on universities, not acknowledging the larger agenda of the administration or its impact on democratic norms and thus Jewish security. Meanwhile, the Title VI mechanism that I used when I was at AJC to help students victimized by antisemitism, including the case of the school that had a “Kick a Jew” day—now seems to have been forgotten. The Department of Education—which worked hard to get schools to adopt better practices that address discrimination, bullying and threats, but still protect speech—is seemingly being dismantled, and threats and claw backs of funds are being used without any due process or real investigation. Instead, apparently, they’ll now run word searches for terms that are alleged to be violative of the IHRA definition.

This assault on the academy, using the IHRA definition as a key ingredient, is McCarthyism. And we’ll all suffer. The Trump administration’s attack on higher education, including pressuring universities to adopt the IHRA definition and targeting of international students for visa revocation and deportation, will profoundly impoverish debate on campus. Students will be chilled from arguing or even inquiring about subjects seen as verboten. Furthermore, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching and mentoring many bright foreign students who have come to learn in the United States, often because they were attracted to our First Amendment traditions, some wanting to return to their own countries and promote these ideals and practices. They likely won’t come any more, and if they do and happen to have views the government doesn’t like, they might be deported.

Conclusion

I began my 2020 book drawing from the field of hate studies to explain why debates around Israel and Palestine are so contentious. When our identity is tethered to an issue of social justice or injustice, the “us” versus “them” juices start flowing. We crave certainty, simplicity, and binary thinking. We are drawn to symbols, not only flags, but ideas. The IHRA definition has become such a symbol, reducing the fight against antisemitism to whether one supports or opposes it. It also seduces people into the comfort of using a definition as a filter to determine whether an idea is contemptible or acceptable—ideas not only about Jews but political ones about Israel. It harms the ability to fight antisemitism because it contorts real questions into a simplistic formula. Antisemitism, like all forms of hate, is complicated, and the comfort of simple answers blinds us to how antisemitism really works.

Antisemitism at its most dangerous is two things: a belief that Jews conspire to harm humanity, and that this Jewish conspiracy explains what goes wrong with the world. From the charge that Jews were responsible for the death of god to the claims of blood libel and well poisoning to the assertion that Jews control the media and are responsible for both capitalism and communism, antisemitism is sometimes theology, sometimes ideology, and always dangerous.

The old saw is that antisemitism is the miner’s canary for the health of a society, and that’s true. But so is the inverse: the vilification of anyone in society can increase antisemitism. When I speak at synagogues and people ask me what my greatest worry about antisemitism is today, I point to two things. The first is the targeting of anyone among us for exclusion or attack—whether it be Muslims, immigrants, transgender people, or anyone else. That singling out, that dehumanization, is a gateway which taps into our human capacity to find comfort from classifying others as a “them” (there’s a chapter about the brain science behind this in the Bard Center for the Study of Hate’s soon-to-be released book Simply Human: A Guide to Understanding and Combating Hate, published by the University of Toronto Press). This dehumanization of fellow humans creates a conveyor belt to antisemitism.

President Trump’s “very fine people” at Charlottesville were objecting to the removal of a Confederate statue. They chanted “Jews will not replace us.” How did Jews get into the mix? If you’re a white supremacist and believe you’re losing a battle to people who you define as inferior, how could this possibly be? Someone must be putting their fingers on the scales. Jews.

The background noise to the mass murder at the Tree of Life synagogue was President Trump and others creating a fever pitch about people trying to “invade” the country from the southern border. A congregation housed at the synagogue had hosted a pro-immigration event in partnership with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Shortly before the murders the shooter wrote an online post: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people … I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

A few months later another white supremacist terrorist with similar motivation murdered even more people—in this case those of Mexican descent were directly targeted—at the Walmart in El Paso. Few would associate those murders with antisemitism because the target that day wasn’t Jews; but the ideas and beliefs that motivated the two shooters were nearly identical. The push to label one attack as simply racist and the other as simply antisemitic blinds us to how hate at its worst can manifest, let alone how racism can lead to antisemitic violence.

Second, I worry about our democracy. Our capacity to fight hate—antisemitism included—is directly correlated to the strength of our democratic institutions. Those institutions, including not just higher education but our independent judiciary, the media, the bar, and others, are under direct assault from the Trump administration. I understand the immense pressure the administration—which seemingly doesn’t care about academic freedom or free speech, let alone due process—can bring to bear. But capitulation to government bullying, like to playground bullies, never ends well: it only encourages them to attack further.

Free speech is a cornerstone of democracy; perhaps the most important one. In my lifetime the fight for free speech was instrumental to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the protests over the Vietnam War. Today, the fight to protect free speech is bound up with the fight to protect democracy itself. In this fight, allowing any incursion on our free speech rights, whatever the justification, erodes the foundation of all our rights. Throughout history, when you give the government the power to decide what speech is okay and what isn’t, it isn’t the speech you don’t like that will likely be suppressed, it’s the speech that the government doesn’t like.

© 2025, Kenneth S. Stern

Cite as: Kenneth S. Stern, A Bad Deal: By Adopting the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, Universities are Sacrificing Academic Freedom, 25-19 Knight First Amend. Inst. (Sept. 5, 2025), https://knightcolumbia.org/content/a-bad-deal-why-using-the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism-on-campus-is-incompatible-with-academic-freedom-and-students-right-to-open-inquiry [https://perma.cc/V2GT-8888].