Antisemitism: What does "It depends on the context" really mean? Harvard has a lot of explaining to do.

 'It depends on the context', former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Echo report published in The Boston Globe, by Mike Damiano and Hillary Burns:  Harvard plunges into roiling debate about what is considered antisemitism, "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews", (Working definition of antisemitism.)

Feeling alone and estranged, many Jews at Harvard wonder, "What’s Next"❓ After one of the most trying weeks in the university’s recent history, some students question whether they have a place on campus. (Menorah on Harvard campus.)

A poster of a kidnapped Israeli baby defaced with the words “Israel did 9/11.” A mural in Harvard Yard that claims “Zionism is racism.” Chants by student protesters to “Globalize the intifada.”

Are these verbal salvos antisemitic? Are they violations of Harvard University’s campus rules? 

What about calling for the genocide of Jews?

These questions are at the center of the explosive controversy at the school, which has faced months of criticism that it failed at two of its most basic duties: to protect students and to protect free speech. 

In recent days, the university provoked backlash, yet again, with its selection of a Harvard professor who opposes a prevailing definition of antisemitism to lead the school’s efforts to combat this brand of bigotry.

Derek Penslar,* a leading scholar of Zionism, believes that the definition of antisemitism officially used by the US government, and increasingly considered in the enforcement of civil rights law, is too vague, too broad, and can be used to censor anti-Israel speech that he believes should be tolerated on college campuses.

But this position puts Penslar, who is Jewish, at odds with many Jewish advocacy groups, who view the definition — which has been adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and dozens of Western nations — as an essential tool for tracking and combating antisemitism.

The dispute boils down to questions about whether some forms of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian speech are antisemitic.

In fact, the debates have provoked donor revolts at Harvard and many other elite schools, prompted accusations of bigotry among undergraduates, and unsettled many American university campuses since the October 7, Hamas-led attack on Israel, and Israel’s retaliatory war in the Gaza Strip.

There are at least three major definitions of antisemitism currently in common use, all of them disputed by one faction or another.

1. An ancient and amorphous hatred, antisemitism can be clear to see or hard to pin down. It can take the form of conspiracy theories about Jewish control of politics, media, or the economy.
2. And, some contend, it can disguise itself as criticism of Israel or Zionism, the movement begun in the 19th century to create a Jewish state in the Holy Land and, since the founding of Israel in 1948, to defend its right to persist.
3. Those tensions are crystallized in the argument over the IHRA definition, which defines both overt hatred of Jews and certain types of criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

“Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is antisemitic, according to the definition. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” is also antisemitic, it says.

For many Jews, that is a bedrock tenet. The movement to create a Jewish homeland gained momentum after growing antisemitism in Europe turned into the Holocaust, when the Nazis killed an estimated 6 million Jews as their “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

It convinced many Jews that only a Jewish state could keep them safe.

They also helped topple former Harvard president Claudine Gay.

At a December 5, congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, she was asked if “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment. “It depends on the context,” she said, prompting calls for her resignation. She stepped down on January 2.

But critics of the IHRA definition, including free speech advocates, pro-Palestinian activists, some Jewish scholars, and Jewish pro-Palestinian groups, say that its language is overly broad and can be used to recast legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic.
“It’s riddled with ambiguous language, which is a problem because it allows it to be weaponized against Palestinian advocates,” said Dov Waxman, professor of political science and chair of Israel studies at UCLA.

Penslar is a co-signatory to a competing definition, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which contains specific carve-outs saying that some controversial forms of anti-Israel speech and action, such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which aims to economically isolate Israel, are not inherently antisemitic.

The proponents of BDS, like other pro-Palestinian activists, criticize Israel for what they describe as its oppression of Palestinians. 

Israel has controlled the West Bank, a majority-Palestinian territory, since 1967 when it won a brief war against surrounding Arab nations. Palestinians there are subject to a military justice system, while Israelis are tried in civil courts. 

State-sanctioned Israeli settlements in the West Bank have displaced Palestinians and made it difficult for them to move freely through the territory. 

In the Gaza Strip, a blockade enforced by Egypt and Israel since Hamas took control of the territory in 2007 throttled the economy and made it difficult to access essential goods, such as medical equipment.

Hamas, a US-designated terror group, has regularly launched rocket attacks at Israel from Gaza, and Israel has responded with retaliatory military campaigns.

On October 7, Hamas led an attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and included the murder of families in their homes, widespread rape, a massacre at a music festival, and the kidnapping of around 250 people, including children. 

Israel responded with an invasion and bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 25,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and displaced nearly the entire population of two million people. 

The fallout from the devastating violence in the Middle East has rippled through American campuses, drawing the attention of the federal government. In that context, the debate over the IHRA definition is far from a mere academic concern.

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina who is leading a House committee investigation into antisemitism at Harvard, told the Globe Thursday that she plans to rely on the IHRA definition. Foxx added that she has not heard concerns that the definition is too broad and can be used to suppress speech.
“We think that’s the gold standard,” she said.

The Trump and Biden administrations have incorporated the IHRA definition into US policy.

“Agencies enforcing Title VI” — a part of US civil rights law that applies to almost all colleges and universities — “must consider IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism,” Herbie Ziskend, a White House spokesperson, told the Globe.

More than 30 colleges and universities are currently facing civil rights investigations opened since October 7, by the Department of Education into alleged discrimination against “shared ancestry groups,” such as Jews, Muslims, or Arabs.

Some of these complaints include allegations of antisemitism. In evaluating those claims, federal officials must take the IHRA definition into account, according to a Trump-era executive order that has remained in effect under Biden.

A federal lawsuit filed earlier this month on behalf of several Harvard graduate and law students accuses Harvard administrators of failing to protect Jewish students from “severe and pervasive” antisemitic harassment on campus, and cited the IHRA definition to bolster its argument. 

Some of the alleged harassment involved anti-Israel slogans that could be deemed antisemitic under the definition.

In the fall, hundreds of Jewish alumni joined in sending a letter to top Harvard leaders asking them to adopt the IHRA definition as the school’s official definition of antisemitism, a move that could, if implemented, affect student disciplinary decisions. (Harvard has not adopted the definition and declined Globe requests for comment.)

That letter was part of a broader push, from some Jewish alumni and advocacy groups, to convince universities to adopt the IHRA definition. They say it would help schools draw clear boundaries between permissible political speech and speech that amounts to bigotry.

Some believe that if Harvard had adopted the IHRA definition before October 7, the university might have avoided much of the animosity that Jewish students say they are experiencing on campus, said Sacha Roytman Dratwa, chief executive of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, a US nonprofit.

Roytman Dratwa, who is based in Israel, added that he does not believe slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Intifada, intifada” should be considered acceptable speech.

But he acknowledged some gray areas. For example, some activists allege Israel is committing apartheid in the way it discriminates against Palestinians. Determining whether such a charge is antisemitic “really depends on the context,” 💬he said.

Really❓

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a phrase embraced by Hamas that some Jews hear as a call for the violent destruction of Israel, which sits between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. 

Some pro-Palestinian activists say the slogan is a call for the political enfranchisement of Palestinians in a new state encompassing the current borders of Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. 

In other words, the Jewish state, as it now exists, would cease.

The term intifada, which means “shaking off” in Arabic, was coined to describe an uprising from 1987 to 1993, against Israel’s military occupations of Gaza and the West Bank. It was marked by widespread Palestinian protests, some of them violent, and a deadly Israeli response.

In the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Palestinian militants carried out suicide bombings, including on buses, at hotels, and at restaurants. One attack by a suicide bomber sent by Hamas killed 30 civilians and injured 140 more during a Seder.

Some pro-Palestinian activists say chants supporting intifada are a call for Palestinian liberation and dispute the interpretation that they amount to an endorsement of violence against civilians.

But Charlie Covit, a Jewish undergraduate who says antisemitism is resurgent at Harvard, wonders if his classmates understand the full context of what they are saying.

“There were some students chanting ‘long live the intifada,’ and kind of laughing,” he said. “Do you know the defining event of the intifada was when 30 people at a Passover meal were blown up?”

Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College in New York, was the lead drafter of the IHRA definition. 

Bard, and others, wrote it in 2004, primarily to serve as a tool for European bureaucrats who were trying to track antisemitism on the continent, he said in an interview with the Globe.

It was for “bean counters,” he said, trying to place instances in one statistical bucket or another.

“It wasn’t designed to say, ‘Let’s call this person an antisemite,’ ” he said. He has watched with alarm, he said, as the definition has increasingly been used as a “speech code.”

Stern, who is Jewish, added that he personally dislikes some of the same types of anti-Israel speech that proponents of the IHRA definition would like to see barred. “There is a correlation between some anti-Zionist speech and a level of antisemitism we see in the world,” he said. “But there are a lot of gray areas.”

Instead, Bard favors a campus environment where students are free from harassment and discrimination, but still understand “they are going to hear things that they might find disagreeable,” he said.

• Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com. 
• Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns.

*Harvard recently announced two task forces: one on combating antisemitism and one on combating Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias. The university announced Derek Penslar, a faculty professor of Jewish history who directs the undergraduate program in that field, as co-chair of the task force on antisemitism. Shortly thereafter, some commentators denounced him for having signed an open letter that referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime”...(reported in SLATE).