Harvard University is facing backlash for its decision to incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, a polarizing definition that some believe chills political speech opposing Israel’s government, into the institution’s nondiscrimination policy.

The policy now calls for officials to consider the IHRA’s examples of antisemitism, many of which highlight discrimination against Zionism—support of the existence of a Jewish national state, which many Zionist advocates argue is an inherent part of some Jewish people’s Jewish identity. (This paragraph was corrected.)

Concerns about discrimination against Zionists—and against Jewish and Israeli students for being assumed to hold Zionist beliefs—on campus have been at a fever pitch since protests against Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023. Zionist advocates have pushed hard for universities to punish certain speech criticizing Israel or that harasses or excludes individuals for being Zionists. But free speech experts and pro-Palestinian activists have strongly cautioned against doing so out of fear that doing so may inaccurately conflate protected political speech with bias against Israeli and Jewish students.

Harvard’s policy, which comes as part of settlements of two lawsuits related to antisemitism on Harvard’s campus, is a significant shift in favor of the former position, much to the chagrin of many staff, students and faculty. One staff member, who headed the university’s Nonviolent Action Lab, even cited the decision in a letter of resignation shared to the social media app BlueSky last week.

The university also committed to taking numerous other additional steps to prevent antisemitism on campus, including publishing reports on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 complaints, providing antisemitism training for employees in the Office for Community Conduct who oversee discrimination complaints and establishing “an official partnership” with an Israeli university.

The settlements could also set a standard for other universities and potentially the Trump administration as it enforces federal civil rights laws.

Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that combats antisemitism and the plaintiff in one of the two lawsuits against Harvard, said that these actions are the most comprehensive any university has taken to remediate a hostile environment toward Jewish students.

“What we would suggest is that what Harvard is committed to do in the settlement agreement should now become the floor,” said Lewin. “It should be what other universities look at and say, at minimum, we’ll do all of this if there’s serious desire to address today’s antisemitism. That’s what universities should be doing.”

Lewin argued that the implementation of the IHRA definition of antisemitism will not stifle political discourse, as the definition allows for speech criticizing the Israeli government but provides guidance for when that speech “crosses the line into antisemitism.”

The university defended the decision, stating on a frequently asked questions webpage about the settlements that the IHRA definition won’t be the unilateral factor in making disciplinary decisions related to alleged antisemitic discrimination. Rather, officials will consider the definition and its accompanying examples “to the extent that those examples might be useful in determining discriminatory intent,” according to the FAQ. It also clarifies that the definition should not be used in ways that contradict campus free speech and academic freedom policies.

But the backlash has nevertheless been swift. The university’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine chapter wrote in a statement that it “strongly opposes” the use of the definition and argued that “in accepting the IHRA definition, Harvard has proved itself to be amenable to political pressure rather than intellectual debate.”

Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist and the director of Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab, resigned in protest of the university’s “response to the genocide in Gaza and deepening repression of campus activism against it” late last week, citing the use of the IHRA definition as “the final push” to leave in his open letter of resignation.

“I help lead a program that studies civil resistance at a research center committed to advancing democracy,” the letter reads, “and my employer, an internationally renowned institution ostensibly committed to academic freedom, will not allow me or my colleagues or its own students to speak freely about these things, lest we offend people who support them, or who misunderstand or intentionally misconstrue principled criticism of Israeli apartheid and genocide and the ideology underpinning them as antisemitic.”

History of Controversy

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was first developed in 2004, not originally as something that was intended to guide disciplinary action, but rather as an academic tool used by researchers in Europe to consistently identify instances of antisemitism across nations, according to Kenneth Stern, the director of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate, who was involved in authoring the definition. He disagrees with campus and governments using it to police speech about Israel.

“It was never intended to be a de facto speech code on a campus,” he said.

Much of the backlash to the definition comes in response to several of the “contemporary examples” of antisemitism provided in the definition that involve criticism of Israel, including one that reads, “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.” Critics argue that, by considering this an example of antisemitism, anyone who adopts this definition will stifle legitimate debate about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Despite this, the definition has been previously proposed and utilized as a way to determine antisemitic discrimination in schools. A 2019 executive order signed by President Donald Trump in his first term required that the federal agencies charged with enforcing Title VI should consider the IHRA definition of antisemitism while doing so, though it specified that the definition is not legally binding. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has reiterated that guidance to institutions ever since, Lewin said. Legislators also tried to codify the definition into law last year, and though the bill passed the House, it never received a vote in the Senate.

Ahead of this academic year, some universities began to incorporate the definition into their formal policies. Harvard is now the second prestigious East Coast institution to do so. New York University was the first, last summer, to begin considering Zionists a protected class.

But because OCR uses the definition, Lewin argues that universities are required to use it regardless of whether they specifically include it in their nondiscrimination policies.

“It really doesn’t matter whether they formally, quote-unquote, adopt it or not, because it’s the standard the Department of Education is using,” Lewin said.

Pro-Palestinian advocates agrees that the IHRA definition has been the de facto benchmark for discrimination cases on college campuses in recent years, though they argue that that shouldn’t be the case.

“It’s not new, right?” said Radhika Sainath, a lawyer with Palestine Legal. “Since Oct. 7, we’ve been talking to Palestinian students and students supporting Palestine who’ve been charged with different student conduct violations where investigators and attorneys for the school seem to unofficially be using IHRA, where they really are investigating people for antisemitism over speech criticizing Israel.”