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antisemitism
Why Harvard Is Wrong to Impose the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
A principled leadership of Harvard and of all the other great universities of this country should be giving leadership and effective direction to the movement against the war on the Palestinians—not figuring out how to destroy it.
Feb 11, 2025
Harvard's decision to impose the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA, definition of antisemitism on its campus underscores the university's complete failure to rise to the occasion of opposing Israel's crimes against humanity, its subservience to the Israeli lobby, and its actual complicity in the mass killings carried out by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.
Not only does Harvard refuse to examine its likely investments in companies profiting from the destruction of Gaza (those investments are secret). But it actively silences opposition to that killing by large numbers of its own students through punishments and suspensions. How times have changed since a previous Harvard administration finally listened to the cries of its students for divestment from the white racist apartheid South African regime in the 1980s! The days when Harvard would welcome a Nelson Mandela to its campus to sing the glories of its protesting students who helped to end apartheid are over because of Mandela's outspoken championing of Palestinian rights during his whole political life.
Even though American Jews are among the leaders of the opposition to Israel's crimes against Palestinians, Harvard will now label these vast numbers of Jews as antisemites because of the loud opposition they are organizing against Israel's indiscriminate attack on Palestinians, against the calls of Israeli leaders to destroy Palestinians through starvation and onslaught, and against Israeli apartheid and denial of basic rights to Palestinians and their parents who once called the land their home.
Is Harvard really concerned about antisemitism? Or just policing its students' language and actions to undermine opposition to the atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza and now in the West Bank?
The issue here is far beyond free speech. It is about playing a major role in silencing opposition to monstrous murder and destruction. In all its expressed concern about what it labels antisemitism and about the discomfort of some of its students who support the Israel's war, there is no mention at all about the reason that so many of its students condemn Israel's actions in Gaza—where it will take years just to remove the bodies of thousands of Palestinians buried under the rubble of their homes, schools, and hospitals. It is as if Israel's policies in Gaza are irrelevant to the upheaval that the Harvard administration seeks to crush. Harvard students were risking their futures not primarily for their rights to free speech but to maintain a semblance of integrity and as an expression of their grief while their own country provided Israel with full-throated support for its attack on Palestinian children.
Antisemitism is a centuries-long curse that must be opposed and challenged whenever it rears its ugly head. The Holocaust is a crime that stands out against all others in the modern age and whose lessons must never be forgotten. One of those lessons is "never again." And that is the lesson that the vast majority of young Jews who condemn Israel for its deliberate destruction of Palestinian society are acting on—as their forebears condemned white South Africa for its brutal apartheid system. The vast movement against Israel's racism and killing is not calling for Israelis to be murdered or driven into the sea. The call is for an end to the war on Palestinians and for equal rights for both peoples whether in the same country or in separate independent states. To pervert the fight against antisemitism into a weapon to be used to subdue opposition to what we have seen each day in Gaza is morally reprehensible. A principled leadership of Harvard and of all the other great universities of this country should be giving leadership and effective direction to the movement against this war on a people—not figuring out how to destroy it.
Why is the assertion by large numbers of American Jews that "the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor" labeled antisemitic? It may be true or it may not be true. But why is it antisemitic? Why can a student at Harvard say that the United States is a racist endeavor without being charged with racism? They can certainly be challenged, but what does racism have to do with such a claim? Why would drawing a comparison between the brutal October 7 Gaza uprising and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis be considered antisemitism? It may be right, wrong, or partially wrong. Let the facts speak. But why is it antisemitic? "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" is wrong. But why is it just fine for Israelis to deny Palestinians that same right without being called on the carpet for doing so? The chant "from the river to the sea" may be mistakenly experienced by many Israelis as calling for the violent destruction of Israel. Clearly the violent destruction of any people cannot be tolerated. But why was it just fine when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party enshrined the same slogan in its documents in the not too distant past? And why is the call by millions of Israelis today for the expansion of the state of Israel into wider areas of the Middle East—even beyond the river to the sea—just fine with our country's leaders?
When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its legal ruling that "Israel's occupation and annexation of the Palestinian territories are unlawful, and its discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinians violate the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid," is that antisemitism? Or just a statement of fact? When the ICJ preliminarily ruled that South Africa (now joined by Ireland) had made a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, was that because Ireland and South Africa are antisemitic? When the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes, were they motivated by antisemitism or by the facts of the matter?
We applaud Harvard's commitment to oppose antisemitism whether directed against Israeli Jews, Zionist Jews, or anti-Zionist Jews. Would that Harvard was just as concerned about the pervasive doxing and harassment of its students for their support of Palestinian life by pro-Israel zealots—in some cases with dire consequences for those students' careers.
So the question is: Is Harvard really concerned about antisemitism? Or just policing its students' language and actions to undermine opposition to the atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza and now in the West Bank?
Harvard University should be faithful to its better angels. To oppose antisemitism and Islamophobia, of course. But to jettison its imposition of the IHRA definition of antisemitism on its faculty and students. To insist that the rights of all its students be respected. But also to stand, as it has at times in the past, on the side of justice. There is a monstrous crime that poses a threat to the very existence of a people that must be ended. There are hostages on both sides that must be released. Let's hope that this first phase of the cease-fire in Gaza can be turned into the beginning of a necessary process that brings immediate peace, food, and medical care to the people of Gaza; ends land seizures and attacks in the West Bank; begins the reconstruction of Gaza; allows self-determination for Palestinians as well as Israelis; and even moves toward the reconciliation of two peoples who wish the same things for their children and who, some day, can do great things together.
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In the Attack on Pro-Palestinian Campus Speech, More Than Jobs Are at Stake
Students and professors across the country are being witch-hunted for their position on Palestine, in a serious threat to democracy, dissent, and the ability of ordinary people to resist authoritarianism.
Jan 30, 2025
For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life.
New York University suspended 11 students who were part of a peaceful flyer distribution and sit-in, including students who simply sat in the library lobby in solidarity. Eleven students at Swarthmore College faced expulsion on assault charges for using a bullhorn. Emerson College laid off 10 staff members, blaming protests for Palestine as a cause for low enrollment, and then using layoffs to target pro-Palestine employees. Emerson also put four students on probation for leafleting on a public sidewalk. Thirteen students at Princeton are being criminalized for “trespassing” on their own campus after they participated in a sit-in. Seven students and faculty at Duke have been called before a University Judicial Board, and without notice or due process are facing termination for participating in nonviolent protest. Tenured professors at Emory are facing similar trials. MIT demoted a tenured professor after he proposed a course entitled Decolonization & Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine, & Israel. Professors at Muhlenberg College, Columbia, John Jay College, City University of New York, NYU, and more, have been fired or forced out for advocating for Palestinian rights.
I have spoken with a university librarian fired after teaching a workshop in which they discussed “scholasticide” in Gaza, a K-12 teacher fired for a social media post critical of Israel and the U.S., and scores of K-12 teachers who have been suspended or otherwise disciplined for speaking about the suffering of Palestinians. An avalanche of Title VI Civil Rights Act complaints are being weaponized against educators, many of them filed by individuals or organizations with absolutely no connection to the school in question.
To truly humanize Palestinians is to defy racist empire, which is—in part—why the backlash against the movement for Palestinian life and freedom is so severe.
I am personally facing a Title VI investigation at Gonzaga University, where I was hired as an “activist scholar” to be the lead instructor in a Solidarity and Social Justice program. The allegations against me are over attending a peaceful student “walkout for Palestine,” and forwarding to our faculty listserve an open student letter (signed by hundreds of our students) against Gonzaga’s anti-protest policy. A range of outcomes are possible, including termination. Because I went on a pre-approved medical leave the day after my first interrogation, I have been denied the right to submit further statements or participate in any way until May. In essence, I will be on trial for five months with no representation or ability to advocate for myself.
The number of the similar cases is impossible to know, due in part to near media omission. Many people who have faced or are currently facing investigations are instructed that they must remain silent (and isolated) as to not “compromise” the investigation. Some are quiet because their jobs, prospects for future employment, and safety are at stake. What is clear is that the trials are wide-reaching, extraordinarily punitive, largely coordinated, and were coming down rapidly across the country at educational institutions of all types even before Trump was sworn in.
The witch-hunting of educators and students is combined with related measures, including a nationwide rollout of campus anti-protest policies that appears at least influenced by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, advisers to Project 2025. At the start of the school year around 100 campuses issued broad policy changes that essentially ban meaningful protest. Some universities have gone as far as to fortress entire campuses with checkpoints and surveillance drones, block common gathering areas with fences, and station security guards outside of classrooms.
These are political attacks, designed to crush a movement that is standing with and for people at the brutal bottom of violent systems of oppression. They have a chilling effect, not just upon those they are wielded against, but upon the entirety of public thought and discourse. Some experts have warned that we are witnessing a new McCarthyism, and one that may well exceed the repression of the 1950s.
The new McCarthyism began before Trump and has been partly initiated by “liberal” higher-ed institutions, but Trump’s tyrannical regime will strive to take the trend to harrowing new extremes. Less than two weeks in office, Trump has already issued an executive order—pulled directly from Project Esther—to deport pro-Palestine students that are not citizens and take “forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all federal resources” against what he described as campuses “infested with radicalism” and “pro-jihadist protests.”
The crackdown on students and educators—being swiftly and terrifyingly exploited and extended by Trump—is a major assault on free speech and academic freedom. It is a grim threat to democracy, dissent, and the ability of ordinary people to resist all of the assaults of authoritarianism and oligarchy that we are up against. It is an alarming slippery slope, that began in large part as a bipartisan attack on a movement that is challenging U.S.-led racist empire.
Activism for Palestinian freedom and equality necessarily confronts American and Western capitalist and imperial interests. It upends supremacist, dehumanizing ideologies—in the case of Palestine, Anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia—that rationalize and sustain a remarkably violent and hierarchical global order. To truly humanize Palestinians is to defy racist empire, which is—in part—why the backlash against the movement for Palestinian life and freedom is so severe, garnering broad support from the far-right and liberals alike.
The witch hunt across educational institutions plays on longstanding Anti-Palestinian racism to vilify all forms of protest for Palestine as terroristic and antisemitic, issuing sweeping charges of antisemitism against any expression of concern for Palestinian life. In this, there is a largely intentional conflation of criticism of Israeli government apartheid and genocide with antisemitism. This misconstruing is also dangerous and oppressive to Jews. According to History and Jewish Studies Professor Annelise Orleck, it seeks to enforce a right-wing Pro-Israel political stance to which all Jews must adhere, and attempts to eviscerate Jewish identities rooted in a long tradition of standing for the rights of the oppressed, democratic pluralism, and social justice. Both Jews and Palestinians have been disproportionately targeted in the campus crackdowns.
While protection of Jewish life has become the pretext for persecuting those who express concern for Palestinian life, a haunting rise in antisemitism on the far-right and at the top is being ignored; at times even defended by groups whose stated mission is to “combat antisemitism.” British-Israeli author Rachel Shabi recently wrote in the The Guardian, “If antisemitism is so blatantly wielded as a political weapon, it creates the impression of a fundamental unseriousness about the subject.” It also undermines the very humanistic movements that are our hope for a world beyond both antisemitism and Anti-Arab racism. To restate words I spoke to students at the protest for which I am being accused of “discrimination” under the Civil Rights Act:
In a moment of such intensive propaganda and power, the world needs your moral clarity. Your moral clarity that all of our lives are inherently interconnected. That the movement for Palestinian liberation is a movement for human liberation. That liberation for Palestinians forces a reckoning with all interlocking systems of oppression, which is core to—not in competition with—Jewish, Black, Brown, Indigenous, White, Collective liberation. Your moral clarity that human solidarity, mutual safety, and freedom is possible. That love, rather than domination, could be the guiding force of our lives together on this one beautiful planet.
We are going to need to hold firm to the principle and aim of collective liberation in the times ahead, and stand with linked arms against attempts to distort our common humanity. I find tremendous hope in the students and educators who have been brave enough to do so, in spite of intense repression and retaliation. It is the courageous acts of ordinary people that will stop the cruel trajectories we are on.
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Stefanik Backs Far-Right Israeli Push for West Bank Control at Confirmation Hearing
The U.N. ambassador nominee also shrugged off the Nazi salutes made by Elon Musk on Inauguration Day.
Jan 21, 2025
As U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik faced questioning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday regarding her nomination for a top diplomatic position, the rights group Jewish Voice for Peace Action called on lawmakers to consider her "record of antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, anti-immigrant, and anti-democracy rhetoric and policy" and block her confirmation.
Stefanik's (R-N.Y.) record was reinforced at the hearing as she was asked about her views on Palestine, expressions of antisemitism in the United States, and far-right Israeli leaders' political agenda, with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) recalling a meeting he had with the congresswoman after President Donald Trump nominated her to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At the meeting, Van Hollen said, Stefanik had expressed support for the idea that Israel has a Biblical right to control the entire West Bank—a position that is held by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, but runs counter to the two-state solution that the U.S. government has long supported.
"Is that your view today?" asked Van Hollen, to which Stefanik replied, "Yes."
Van Hollen noted that Stefanik's viewpoint also flies in the face of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions and international consensus about the Middle East conflict.
"If the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we're going to have to look at the U.N. Security Council resolutions," said the senator. "And it's going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed, which is a view that was not held by the founders of the state of Israel."
Stefanik also refused to answer a direct question from Van Hollen regarding whether Palestinian people have the right to self-determination, saying only that she supports "human rights for all" and pivoting to a call for Israeli hostages to be released by Hamas.
Jenin Younes, a civil liberties attorney, said Stefanik expressed "religious fanaticism, pure and simple" at the confirmation hearing—which was held as Israeli settlers and soldiers ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
"That [Stefanik] will now play a major role with respect to our foreign policy in the region is terrifying," said Younes.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action noted that in addition to supporting "the Israeli government's brutal genocide of Palestinians," Stefanik has also "amplified the antisemitic Great Replacement theory"—which claims the influence and power of white Christian Americans is being deliberately diminished by Jewish Americans and immigration policy.
Despite her support for the debunked conspiracy theory, Stefanik made headlines last year for her accusations against college students, faculty, and administrators over the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that exploded across campuses as Americans spoke out against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza. The congresswoman said the protests were expressions of antisemitism and pushed for the resignation of university leaders who declined to discipline students who spoke out against Israel.
The hearings where Stefanik lambasted college leaders "were part of a broader campaign to silence anti-war activism and dissent on college campuses while forwarding the MAGA culture war campaign against [diversity, equity, and inclusion], critical race theory, and LGBTQ+ rights," said JVP Action.
An exchange between Stefanik and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday also raised questions over Stefanik's views on antisemitism. Murphy asked the nominee about the Nazi salute twice displayed by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk—whom the president has named to lead his proposed Department of Government Efficiency—at an event Monday night.
" Elon Musk did not do those salutes," Stefanik asserted.
Murphy countered by reading several comments from right-wing commentators who applauded Musk's "Heil Hitler" salute.
"Over and over again last night, white supremacist groups and neo-Nazi groups in this country rallied around that visual," said Murphy.
JVP Action said Stefanik has "deeply embraced Trump's anti-democratic agenda."
"Her nomination must be blocked," said the group.
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