In liberal democracies, you are allowed to criticise governments. You are allowed to criticise ideologies. You are allowed to say, for instance, that Britain should not exist, that Zionism is a colonial project, or that the United States is an empire in denial. You are not allowed to harass or threaten people on the basis of race or religion. These are separate concepts. Or they were.
Earlier this month, Northwestern University (under pressure from the Department of Education and facing a freeze on federal research funding) made an “antisemitism training” mandatory for all students. You can’t register for classes unless you complete it. The course was designed, not by Jewish studies scholars or historians of racism, but by StandWithUs, a right-wing pro-Israel advocacy group. The message is clear: Zionism is not just one possible Jewish identity, it is the Jewish identity, and to question it is to commit a kind of blasphemy.
The blasphemy is political, not spiritual. It lies in supporting Palestinian rights, in criticising Israel’s occupation, in describing Gaza as an open-air prison. It lies in saying, accurately, that Zionism displaced a people and continues to dispossess them. These aren’t slurs or stereotypes. They’re positions (moral, political, historical) and in many universities, they are now being reclassified as hate.
A Definition Stretched to Breaking
The moral sleight of hand begins with the IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted by the Trump administration and now effectively codified into federal policy. At first glance, it looks like a well-meaning effort to prevent discrimination. But tucked into the “working examples” are clauses that define as antisemitic “applying double standards to Israel,” “comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” or “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”
It’s the kind of definition that, in practice, permits pro-Israel advocates to define the limits of acceptable speech. A Palestinian student who calls for a single democratic state in historic Palestine might be deemed antisemitic for denying Jewish self-determination. A Jewish student from the diaspora who opposes Zionism on religious or ethical grounds might be told that their identity is self-hating, suspicious, or incomplete.
The IHRA definition is not legally binding. But in the climate of post-October 7 crackdowns, it doesn’t have to be. It has become a weapon of policy and intimidation. Civil liberties lawyers have raised red flags. Jewish academics have opposed it. Alternative definitions (like the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism)1 have been proposed, offering more nuanced tools for distinguishing between racism and criticism of a state. But none of these are being mandated at Northwestern. Or Columbia. Or UCLA.
Training as Ideological Enforcement
If this were merely a matter of interpretation, that would be one thing. But the training itself (from its language, its authorship, to its consequences) is the issue. What’s being rolled out is not a programme to protect Jewish students from abuse. It’s a mechanism to discipline campus speech, to teach students that anti-Zionism is taboo and that political critique must defer to geopolitical orthodoxy.
The training makes no mention of Palestinian displacement. No Nakba. No apartheid. No occupation. It speaks of Jewish trauma, which is real and deserves protection. But it frames that trauma as exclusive, as the basis for silence. It doesn’t ask how Jewish safety is entangled with Palestinian suffering. It doesn’t mention the many Jewish voices who oppose Zionism. These voices are erased, flattened into the fantasy of a global consensus.
Oh, and if you don’t take the course, you don’t get to register. This is not persuasion. It’s coercion. A loyalty oath by another name.
Who Owns Antisemitism?
There’s a quiet arrogance in the way these trainings operate: the assumption that there is one correct view of Jewishness, one correct view of history, and one correct view of what it means to be safe. But antisemitism is not owned by Israel, nor by its defenders in American politics. It is not a trademark. It is a historical wound that belongs to all Jews, including those who reject the Zionist project. It is a problem that exists on the far right, in white nationalism, in conspiracies about George Soros and Jewish globalism and secret cabals. It does not reside in the student holding a banner that says “From the river to the sea.”
When antisemitism is used to shut down debate, it becomes something else: not a shield, but a sword. It is no longer about safety, but about silencing. It becomes the weaponisation of trauma for state propaganda.
The Erasure of Palestine
There’s an old trick in colonialism: erase the native, then criminalise their return. What these trainings do is similar. They erase Palestine from the story. Then they punish those who insist it exists.
The students who face discipline or blacklisting aren’t attacking Jews. They’re protesting the bombardment of Gaza. They’re calling out U.S. complicity in arms sales and diplomatic cover. They’re questioning the morality of a state that drops 2,000-lb bombs on refugee camps. And for this, they are branded hateful, bigoted, unsafe.
This inversion. Where power becomes victimhood and protest becomes threat. Is the real danger. It’s not just bad pedagogy. It’s a political project: to entrench U.S.-Israel relations by making their terms unchallengeable.
What Real Anti-Racism Looks Like
To be against antisemitism is to be against all racism. Not just the racism that flatters American foreign policy. Not just the racism that can be tidily resolved through DEI training. It is to be against pogroms and against checkpoints. Against swastikas and against siege warfare. Against white supremacist militias and against militarised settlers.
Real anti-racism doesn’t flatten difference into obedience. It doesn’t demand that everyone accept one version of Jewishness, one version of history, one version of safety. It makes room for dissent. It protects the radical, not just the respectable. It asks what solidarity means, not what silence can achieve.
If these trainings taught students how to recognise antisemitic tropes and how to challenge systems of power that harm both Jews and Palestinians, they might be defensible. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re punishing a politics that refuses to disappear. They’re teaching fear. They’re codifying the idea that some people’s liberation is inherently dangerous.
And that, not the protest outside, is the real threat to the university.
FOOTNOTES
- The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) is a non-binding scholarly statement developed in 2021 by over 200 academics in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and antisemitism. It defines antisemitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews” and offers clear distinctions between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel or Zionism. Created as a counterpoint to the IHRA Working Definition, the JDA defends free expression on Palestine and affirms that opposition to Zionism or support for Palestinian rights is not inherently antisemitic. Full text: https://jerusalemdeclaration.org
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