JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Within the first two weeks of the new Trump administration, the Justice Department announced a White House task force to combat antisemitism. Its first priority was to, quote, "root out antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses." Since then, the Trump administration has been cracking down on criticism of Israel, threatening international students with deportation and freezing funding to universities like Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern and, just last week, UCLA. Gene Demby from NPR's Code Switch has been reporting on this effort. He joins us now. Hi, Gene.
GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Hey. Thanks for having me, Juana.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. I mean, first, we should just say that a lot hinges on what antisemitism means, and not everyone defines it in the same way. So how is the Trump administration defining antisemitism?
DEMBY: Yeah, right now, the definition that the Trump administration is using comes from what's known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition, and the IHRA definition begins by stating, quote, "antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," end quote. But it's contested for what else it says. Arno Rosenfeld is a reporter at the Jewish publication The Forward, and he's been covering the climate on campuses.
ARNO ROSENFELD: What's controversial are the examples that they attach to it, roughly half of which are about Israel, and they include things like holding Israel to a double standard or accusing Israel of being a racist endeavor, I think, is the language in there. And those are alongside things like denying the Holocaust.
SUMMERS: And Gene, I understand that some schools have rolled out training as well as policies that really hinge on that particular definition of antisemitism, including Columbia and Northwestern Universities, to name a few. And schools have been fielding criticism for that in recent weeks and months. Tell us why.
DEMBY: Yeah. Some of those trainings, like the one at Northwestern, were designed by pro-Israel advocacy groups like the Jewish United Federation. And some students at Northwestern told the Guardian that they feel these trainings are an attempt to chill speech that's critical of Israel. I reached out to the Jewish United Fund, and they told me that there is a line in one of the training videos that says, quote, "it is not antisemitic to criticize the policies, practices or members of the Israeli government," end quote. And the spokesperson there I talked to told me there's a big difference between criticizing policies of the state of Israel versus questioning Israel's right to exist and demonizing Jewish students for their connections to Israel.
SUMMERS: I mean, this definition of antisemitism that the Trump administration is using and that many of these university trainings are also using - how did it come to be? Who defined it?
DEMBY: I actually had a chance to talk with Kenneth Stern, who helped author the IHRA definition of antisemitism. So Stern is a Zionist. He's a supporter of Israel. And he says this definition was meant to be a rubric for data collection between governments of different countries who wanted to track incidents of antisemitism. And we talked before these mandatory trainings were put in place, but he says he's worried about what its usage in this way means for speech and what it means for Jews on campuses.
KENNETH STERN: We're seeing an assault on the university and for many folks using antisemitism as an excuse, and that troubles me even more because when you harm the university, when you harm democratic institutions, when you harm free speech, you look historically, Jews have not done well at those periods of time.
DEMBY: And this is something that Arno Rosenfeld said, as well. He told me that, while most American Jews are supporters of Israel, Jewish students have always been heavily involved in - and in some cases, leaders - in the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses. And so it's a definition of antisemitism that necessarily precludes Jews like them.
SUMMERS: So Gene, who is pushing the Trump administration to apply this specific definition of antisemitism in this way?
DEMBY: Well, listeners will remember Project 2025. That's the policy wish list from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that they wanted President Trump to follow if and when he was reelected. Well, Heritage also drafted something called Project Esther. And Project Esther lays out plans to do things like labeling support for Palestinians as antisemitic. It equates support for Palestinians with support for Hamas. Project Esther calls for monitoring the social media accounts of people viewed as pro-Palestinian, deporting people who are pro-Palestinian. And we've all watched as the Trump administration has rolled out these same strategies.
SUMMERS: Right. Now, as a new academic year is set to begin, what do we know about what that might be like for Jewish students?
DEMBY: Well, what's interesting is that Rosenfeld - he points at a polling that showed that older Jews, people over 35, see antisemitism on campus as a much larger problem than do younger Jews, who see it as a problem on par with racism and Islamophobia on campuses. But he said that if you really wanted to address antisemitism in progressive spaces on campuses, you need credible messengers.
ROSENFELD: You need somebody who can come and say, you can condemn Israeli genocide in Gaza and Israel apartheid and all these things. That's fine. That's not antisemitic. What I am saying is that, you know, if you meet a Jewish student at a party, the first thing out of your mouth after you find out that they're Jewish cannot be, what do you think about Israel? - because that's a litmus test based just on their identity.
DEMBY: He says that many students are worried that antisemitism will come to be associated with this authoritarian right-wing crackdown on college campuses, which is going to make it harder to have honest conversation about more complicated forms of antisemitism.
SUMMERS: Gene Demby is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch, which covers issues of race and identity. Gene, thank you.
DEMBY: Thank you, Juana.
SUMMERS: And for more coverage of all sides of the Israel-Gaza conflict, go to npr.org/mideastupdates. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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