Harvard reached a settlement in two ongoing Title VI lawsuits accusing the university of mishandling antisemitism on campus for an undisclosed amount on Tuesday. Harvard’s decision to adopt the IHRA definition could blur the lines between legitimate political discourse and antisemitic rhetoric.
University of California Los Angeles professor of Jewish history David N. Myers, who sat on the task force that developed the Nexus definition, called the IHRA definition a “form of virtue signaling,” saying that it did not offer a practical tool for combating antisemitism.
“It’s a very coarse filter that mistakes criticism of Israel for antisemitism, and therefore it doesn’t really allow us to get at what is antisemitic,” Myers said.
Joshua Shanes, a Jewish studies professor at the College of Charleston who also sits on the Nexus task force, said some anti-Zionist rhetoric can tilt into antisemitism. But he said he found it “troubling” to treat Zionism as a protected category instead of a matter of political debate.
“If someone’s going to come along and say, ‘Jews are a constructed nation, Palestinians are a constructed nation, let’s just create a democracy’ — I totally reject that would be antisemitic, although I think defenders of IHRA would say it is,” Shanes said.