In the same week that President Donald J. Trump targeted deep-pocketed colleges for potential civil-rights investigations, Harvard University announced that, to settle two lawsuits, it would incorporate a contentious definition of antisemitism favored by Trump in its antidiscrimination procedures.
Meanwhile, George Washington University announced Monday that it entered into an agreement with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to settle two investigations. One of those complaints specifically requested that the university adopt that same antisemitism definition. The university has not done so. (The case was resolved in the last days of the Biden administration.)
These shifts in semantics reflect how colleges are continuing to wrestle with questions about how to define and respond to antisemitism — at a moment when federal investigators are scrutinizing it.
The war in Gaza — temporarily paused by a ceasefire — has sparked more than a year of campus activism and a wave of attention on Title VI, the education statute barring discrimination based on race or national origin. Trump said on the campaign trail that he believed colleges were violating federal law by allowing pro-Palestinian students protesting the war to make antisemitic remarks with no consequences.
The lawsuits against Harvard alleged that the university didn’t do enough to tackle rampant antisemitism on its campus after the war broke out. At George Washington, one federal complaint claimed the university failed to support, and in at least one case targeted, pro-Palestinian students, while another alleged a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students in a psychology program. Neither university admitted wrongdoing.
The Office for Civil Rights has 80 open investigations into potential Title VI violations related to national origin and religion at 66 higher-education institutions.
Debate over the “working definition” put forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, known as IHRA, most often centers on some of its examples of antisemitism, which include “applying double standards” to the state of Israel and comparing the country’s policies to those of Nazi Germany. Critics argue that applying the definition to campus-conduct policies could lead to unfair discipline against students and faculty members who express criticism of Israel — suppressing free speech by conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
But with the new Trump administration turning its eye to higher education, Harvard in particular may be “bowing its head” to political pressure, preemptively “cutting [its] losses,” said Jonathan Jacoby, national director of the Nexus Leadership Project, a Jewish organization working to counter antisemitism.
Jacoby condemned the use of the IHRA definition as a “litmus test and an enforcement tool.” Instead of a singular standard, he said it should be treated as a reference in conjunction with other definitions, which specify that criticism and nonviolent political action toward the state of Israel — or Zionism more broadly — is not antisemitic. IHRA’s examples of antisemitism were relevant when they were drafted two decades ago, Jacoby said, but the context has changed.
“There were no students on campuses chanting ‘From the river to the sea’ back then,” he said. “If [the definition is] misused, then it actually creates divisions on campus. It suppresses open dialogue and academic freedom. None of those things protect students.”
Harvard maintains that its adoption of the IHRA definition is “consistent with the university’s protections for free speech and academic freedom” but does not prevent “exposure to all uncomfortable or challenging conversations.”
It is important to ensure that there can be a robust discussion about Israel in the same way that there is a robust discussion of other issues on campuses. At the same time, it’s important to protect all students from discrimination.
“The university stands strongly for reasoned dissent and the free exchange of ideas, beliefs, and opinions,” Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesperson, said in an email.
The university’s conduct policy clarifies that “ordinarily” it is not a violation of policy for students and faculty members to make controversial statements, express political disagreement, or criticize a government’s policies or leaders.
A Complex Debate
Harvard’s adoption raises questions over whether impending Trump investigations will lead other colleges to chart a similar path. In a New York Times opinion essay, columnist Michelle Goldberg said Harvard “probably won’t be the last school to fall in line” with Trump’s agenda.
The fact that George Washington has not embraced the IHRA definition is a “big win,” said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, which brought one of the complaints against the university on behalf of three students. In a statement about the case’s resolution, Palestine Legal said the university “declined to adopt” the definition. George Washington’s statement rejected that claim: “Assertions by advocates that other definitions or standards were material to these discussions is a mischaracterization.”
Sainath pointed out that, shortly after Harvard adopted the definition, the university canceled a panel with patients from Gaza. Using the definition in disciplinary procedures, she argued, is “deeply and fundamentally racist towards Palestinians” and censors pro-Palestinian speech.
“Adopting IHRA just makes a mockery of academic freedom,” Sainath said. “No university can call itself a place of ideas and research and debate and discussion and adopt a definition of antisemitism that makes it impossible to criticize a state.”
Omer Bartov, a leading scholar and historian of genocide at Brown University, called Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA definition “shameful” and “cowardly.”
Although he isn’t intimidated, Bartov — who is Israeli American and has accused Israel of genocide — suspects the definition’s application may dissuade other professors, at Harvard and elsewhere, from expressing criticism of Israel or discussing the conflict in classes and research. Adopting the definition may create an “inverse effect” of increasing rather than mitigating antisemitism, he added.
To David M. Schizer, a professor of law and economics and co-chair of Columbia University’s task force on antisemitism, Harvard’s settlement signals not a capitulation to pressure, but an adjustment to abide by existing law. He pointed out that a 2019 Trump executive order instructed executive agencies to consider the IHRA definition when enforcing Title VI regulations.
“Harvard simply agreed to do what the law already requires, and that’s not a hard thing to do,” Schizer said. “The harder question has to do with how does a university protect protected classes from discrimination while at the same time protecting speech?”
Since the IHRA definition states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic,” Schizer disagrees with arguments that its adoption censors speech critical of Israel.
Still, in recommendations to the university, Columbia’s task force declined to rely on the IHRA, or any other existing definition, and instead crafted its own “working definition,” which places less emphasis on the state of Israel. The task force’s definition agrees with IHRA that “certain double standards” applied to Israel can be antisemitic.
The task force recommended its definition, which was based on listening sessions with students, be used in training and education, not discipline.
“I think it is important to ensure that there can be a robust discussion about Israel in the same way that there is a robust discussion of other issues on campuses,” Schizer said. “At the same time, it’s important to protect all students from discrimination, including Israeli and Jewish students. And I believe that we can do both of those things.”
