President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order last week intended to combat campus anti-Semitism. But it was divisive in the American Jewish community and met with mixed reactions among Jewish studies and Israel studies faculty.
The executive order reasserts that Jews are protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which means a university could lose federal funding for allowing discrimination against them.
Many celebrated the decision, which came amidst a swell of anti-Semitic incidents, on campuses and across the country. The executive order followed a shooting at a kosher grocery store in New Jersey and a number of incidents at Syracuse University, including a threatening email sent to a Jewish faculty member and swastikas found on campus. An FBI report found that 56.9% of anti-religious hate crimes were motivated by anti-Semitism in 2018. And according to a survey by the Anti-Defamation League, an organization focused on anti-Semitism, there were 204 anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses in 2017, an 89% increase from the previous year.
“In a climate of rising anti-Semitism, this Executive Order provides valuable guidance on anti-Semitism, giving law enforcement and campus officials an important additional tool to help identify and fight this pernicious hate,” said Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt in a statement. “It also reaffirms protection of Jews under Title VI without infringing on First Amendment rights. These are all important steps forward.”
But there’s debate over the definition of anti-Semitism the executive order uses, a definition adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the U.S. State Department. Among other things, it includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” – and calling “the existence of a State of Israel” a “racist endeavor” – as a type of anti-Semitism.
The definition was originally drafted as a broad reference to track anti-Semitic incidents, not as a legal framework, and the executive order tells the Department of Education to “consider” this “non-legally binding working definition” in Title VI charges.
Still, faculty like Northeastern University Israel Studies Professor Dr. Dov Waxman worry the definition is too broad and may have a “chilling effect” on campus conversations around Israel.
