He Wrote a Definition of Antisemitism; Now He Says It’s Being Weaponized

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: And as we mentioned earlier, the crisis across America’s campuses is making some wrestle with the current definition of antisemitism, as written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. It’s a definition which has been adopted by countries across the globe. Next, Michel Martin speaks to the author Kenneth Stern, who led the drafting of that document and who now warns it’s being used to chill free speech.

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MICHEL MARTIN, NPR, HOST: Thanks, Christiane. Kenneth Stern, thank you so much for joining us.

KENNETH STERN, AUTHOR: Thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: Now, I just want to mention that you have a distinguished career as a trial lawyer, as an author, as a human rights activist. But what I think a lot of people might know about you is that you were the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, working definition of antisemitism, and we’re going to talk a little bit about the way you feel this definition has been used and perhaps misused. But I just wanted to ask you to start us off by telling us why you drafted this to begin with. What was the — what’s the origin story of this?

STERN: Well, the origin story was that after the beginning of the second intifada and the collapse of the peace process in 2000, there was an uptick in attacks on Jews in — particularly in Europe and the United States too, but mostly in Europe. And there was a group called the European Monitoring Center that was tasked with doing reports about racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism and have put out a report in the end of 2004 that found, in fact, that the — some of the attacks were (INAUDIBLE) not only the traditional suspects, white supremacists and others, but also by young Arab and Muslim folks in some outskirts of Paris and other places like that. So, the data was right. But they said, we have a problem and that we have all these different countries that have people that are collecting information and no common score sheet, no common definition of what to look at. And then they also said, well, we’re going to have a temporary definition that’s going to look at issues of antisemitism based on stereotypes, about Jews. And they went through that exercise and said, what do we do if a Jew is attacked in the streets of a European city as a stand in for an Israeli? And they said, if somebody had these stereotypes and applied them to Israelis and reapplied them to Jews, that was antisemitism, but not if they were upset with Israeli policy. They said that’s lamentable, but should not be counted. And that struck me as nuts basically, because I grew up at the time of the civil rights movement and I can’t imagine somebody saying, well, lynching some black person is racist that they have these stereotypes about black people, but not if they were upset by a political event, Martin Luther King speech. So, it just so happened that the director of the European Monitoring Center was invited by a colleague to come to the American Jewish Committee, where I worked, for its annual meeting to talk broadly with others about what was happening in Europe. And as we saw then, as we see now, there’s some discourse about Israel that’s correlated with attacks on Jews, not necessarily causation, but we thought it was important to take the temperature. There were other reasons for the definition too, but that’s how it started. And that’s why there is real examples inside the definition.

MARTIN: I wanted to talk about the op-ed you wrote for “The Boston Globe” a few weeks ago. You say that the term is now being used — it’s now being weaponized actually to muzzle free speech on campus. Could you just explain how the term or the framework that you wrote is now being weaponized and why you find that dangerous?

STERN: Well, the language of the definition was being — started to be used in Title VI cases after 2010. And it was looking at issues like what a professor was teaching, what speakers were coming into campus, what texts were being assigned, and things that clearly are the heart of academic freedom. And, you know, my concern is that the pushing of this on, especially on Title VI cases, I’m not particularly worried about the cases themselves, although I am worried about how some of them are going to be litigated. The pressure is on administrators, when they know that people are poised to sue when a certain speech is happening on a campus that may trigger somebody to file a Title VI case, they’re more likely to try to suppress that speech or counter that speech, because part of what they do in their day job is to protect the university from being sued. So, I see it as not only just the question of the legal question, I see it as intentionally trying to create a chilling effect, and I don’t think that’s appropriate counter speech with other speech. You don’t use instruments of law to suppress speech. And that’s how I see it’s being used. And it’s also becoming a symbol in a way, that’s really troubling to me, too, about, you know, being concerned about antisemitism, which is the, you know, work I’ve been doing for decades. Once we try to reduce things into is this antisemitism or not, we’re losing focus on so many things about how antisemitism works in the real world. We’d all consider the Tree of Life shooting clearly antisemitic, but the shooter at the Walmart, in El Paso, a few months later, had the same ideology, was worried about the fevered pitch about immigrants destroying our country, we look at one is antisemitism, we don’t look at the others as antisemitism. When I talk to synagogues and I said, just concerned about antisemitism. What concerns me most is not necessarily what people are saying about Jews, it’s what politicians and others is saying about anyone among us as a danger, whether it’s immigrants or Muslims or others, because once you prime that pump, that inevitably leads people getting into these buckets of thinking that are sort of conveyor belts to conspiracy theories. On top of that, I, you know, worked the American Jewish Committee for 25 years. I jealously guarded the term antisemitism. To have a sting, it has to be used only in the clearest cases. So, I’d always default to not. Now, there’s a push to make it almost ubiquitous. And when everything becomes antisemitic, nothing is antisemitic, and that makes it harder to fight antisemitism.

MARTIN: You know, look, I take your point. Look, if everything’s antisemitism, then nothing is antisemitism. But having said that, does the framework still have utility? Like, is there still a need for this or is that — or has it gone so far, then, in its misuse, that it no longer has utility?

STERN: Well, I think, you know, there are various definitions of antisemitism. Some of them are better for one purpose or another. Some of them are more likely to be used to stop pro-Palestinian speech, or at least abused, which is how I see the — you know, the IRA (ph)definition being engaged. But, you know, all of them have also core, the basic idea that antisemitism is conspiracy theory about Jews harming humanity. And, you know, giving an explanation for what goes wrong in the world. But again, I don’t want, you know, the shortcuts to be used to look at speech. And the parallel I look at is imagine if one put together a definition of racism that would also take into account some political things that may affect racism. Not to say, if you say these things are inherently racist, but they may be appropriate things to consider. So, opposition to Black Lives Matter, opposition to removal of confederate statues, opposition to affirmative action, then you can make the argument that those things might be in dishes of the temperature of racism to put into surveys and so forth. Would you want to then have a hate speech code in effect, let alone endorsed by Congress that says one has this particular view on any of these issues, they’re therefore expressing racism? I don’t think so. And you see the damage that that would do to the ability to even look at these things on a college campus. And those are the same concerns I have about the use of these definitions in this context.

MARTIN: This is kind of exactly the issue that we see at play now, as these demonstrations on college campuses have, you know, spread really across the country. And I just — you know, this is sort of the argument that we are being told that this is between, you know, an argument between free speech and student safety. Do you see it that way?

STERN: Really a complicated issue. But I see the — you know, students should be safe from harassment, from intimidation, from bullying, from discrimination, regardless of whether they fit into one of the — you know, the classifications legally. Any student should be protected from those things. But students should be prepared and the university should stress that students are going to hear things that they find disturbing. I hear a lot of the chants and things disturbing. But if they’re not being made as part of a threat, just a question of expression, that has to be protected. Part of the background to what we’re seeing now was the push to outlaw Students for Justice in Palestine, because of what they’re saying. And I disagree with a lot of what they’re saying, but I don’t want them banned. DeSantis did that in Florida. Brandeis did that. Not based on anything they did, just in terms of what they were saying. And so, that’s part of the reason why I think we’re seeing some of the uptick now in the response is that there’s been a — you know, a lack of clarity. And we’re not — you know, we’re going to support your right to say things that we find, you know, offensive. We’re going to use the assets of the institution to teach about it, but we’re not going to suspend you or discipline you for things that you say.

MARTIN: What is the line? Because obviously some speech is already criminal conduct. If a person threatens to kill you, right, you can — makes a credible threat to kill somebody, you can be arrested for that. That’s already a crime. So, where do you feel like the universities have kind of gone off the rails?

STERN: Yes. I mean, if somebody makes a specific threat to a person, I’m going to kill you, and it’s a direct immediate threat, that’s obviously a problem. There was a case a number of years ago in California, somebody found the names of everybody that sounded like an Asian student — Asian-American student and put out an e-mail to all of them saying, I’m going to make it my mission in life to hunt you down and kill you or something. He got convicted appropriately so. But if I just stand up and say something deplorable about, you know, Zionist or Israelis or any group that’s nothing more than speech, that should be counted but it shouldn’t be disciplined. And that’s what we’re losing.

MARTIN: One of the sort of a key flashpoints, I think, would be around from the river to the sea, eight. Palestine should be free from the river to the sea, right. Some people are interpreting that as a belief that Israel shouldn’t exist. Now, under the definition, you know, one of the definitions of antisemitism under the framework was, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor. Right? That is one of sort of the definitions. But people who want to use that phrase, some of them say, that’s not what they’re saying. What they’re saying is that — but they believe that Israel should be a multiethnic, multireligious democracy like the United States. That was kind of the hinge upon which that congressional hearing where some of the, you know, congressional Republicans were hammering on the presidents of a number of the universities and saying that they were insufficiently zealous about guarding against antisemitism and genocide. How do you think about that?

STERN: Well, first of all, the — that December 5th hearing was really a set up in a lot of ways. And I found it very offensive that, you know, you have members of Congress who wouldn’t criticize President Trump for hosting a holocaust scenario, wouldn’t criticize him for — criticizing for saying immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country, now apparently care about issues like antisemitism. And what they set up was this, you know, claim that from the river to the sea means genocide against Jews. And are you going to stop claims for genocide against Jews? Again, speech is deplorable. You don’t discipline people for use the assets of the university, you know, to go against it. And, you know, there was a poll that came out that — was it 66 percent of Jewish students here from the river to the sea as genocide against Jews. And I find that phrase disturbing too. I’m a Zionist. I believe in the two- state solution. And I think some are using it to say that — you know, precisely that there should be no right of Jews to exist in that area. However, 14 percent of Muslims, only 14 percent of Muslim students surveyed see that as a call for getting rid of Jews or genocide. And I think that — you know, that’s part of the challenge is that people are hearing different things at the moment. And I have a colleague at Bard who was realizing that people were throwing around terms like antisemitism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism as weapons and we’re in a college. So, it’s just putting — put together a class. I’m actually teaching the session on antisemitism later this week. What are these words mean? How do we understand them? Why do people hear them differently? You know, those are the things that a university should do. It shouldn’t say, here’s a statement that’s going to get you into discipline, for as long as it’s not a true threat.

MARTIN: Muslim students — Muslim people in general, have had this complaint for some time about words that are important in their culture and traditions that they feel have been misused, like jihad. You know, jihad, for example, for — you know, you’ll have people say, well, jihad can mean, like, a jihad against bad habits, you know, we’re going to wage a, you know, war against bad habits of our own, and they feel like, well, why do other people get to define what we think without asking us what we mean by those words. So, how do you redefine words that have been claimed for certain meanings?

STERN: Well — and it’s not new. I mean, and it’s not only about this issue. We see it around politics, immigration, abortion, other things, too. You know, I run a hate studies center, and that informs a lot of how I think about these issues. I think — especially on hot button issues where your identity is tethered to an issue of perceived social justice or injustice, we know from brain science and social psychology and other fields like, you know, inform heat studies, what happens to human beings? We get into this sort of us versus them buckets. We get into the place where we crave simplicity. We crave certainty. We crave symbols. And I think part of what we’re seeing around the question of the IRA (ph)definition and other things are questions of symbols, and we don’t want to engage in the complexity of why these things are so contentious. We want somebody to tell us what side of a ledger we should put it on and not. And that’s part of the concern I have about the push of the IRA (ph)definition and there are a couple of bills in front of Congress at the moment that are considering using it, more for educational purposes, also for funding issues and in Europe too. And I don’t see that as different from what I object to, what, again, Governor DeSantis, not to pick on him, but what he’s doing in Florida about what do we teach about gender? What do we teach about race? I may not agree with everything that’s being taught. But I don’t want the state to define what’s OK to teach and what isn’t. I want faculty and students and, you know, universities to do that. And antisemitism was a real problem, and there are Jewish students who are being intimidated, but the way to deal with it is not to use law to try to suppress speech we don’t like, it’s to encourage students how to treat each other, how to realize that we’re all in the same community together. It’s not a competition, you know, between faculty and students, but how do we engage this moment together? And why don’t we have the intellectual curiosity? Aren’t you curious as to why they have that view? Can’t you have the emotional empathy to imagine yourself in their shoes. So, those are the types of things that, I think, we need to focus on as opposed to just what word should be, you know, wants to get you into trouble.

MARTIN: As we are speaking now, it’s the end of the semester, graduations are afoot. In some places, students are being arrested. They’re saying — they’re giving them specific, you know, instructions. If you don’t leave by X time, we’re going to — you’re going to be arrested. That’s already happened in a number of places. So, if you were advising university presidents who are addressing this, given everything that’s already happened, what would you do now?

STERN: It’s a tough question. I’m glad I’m not in their seats. But what I have been telling them, and I have been meeting with boards and presidents and so forth, is that they should prioritize academic freedom in terms of whatever they do. And some of the reasons that we’re seeing at the moment was not prioritizing academic freedom. I think that, you know, arresting students should be the last resort for any reason. I thought — I saw a statement this morning from the president of Wesleyan who basically said, as long as there’s not violence, we’re going to let the encampment be. I understand the dynamics and difficulties with graduations and other things. Some people can’t use that space. It’s not an easy thing. But it’s not going to be resolved by, you know, mass arrests or mass suspensions. And I think that only energizes the protesters in some way, too. And I understand that.

MARTIN: Kenneth Stern, thank you so much for speaking with us today.

STERN: It’s been my honor to be with you. I thank you very much.