Over 30 Scholars of Antisemitism, Holocaust Studies, and Jewish History Challenge Trump’s Attack on Free Speech

Image from the April 17 NYC rally via @AsadFromNYC on X

Via a Jewish Voice for Peace Press Release,

On Thursday (April 17) over 32 prominent Jewish scholars of antisemitism, Holocaust Studies, and Jewish History challenged the Trump administration’s authoritarian crackdown on free speech by demonstrating the danger and falsehood of its false claims to care about Jewish safety. The Trump administration uses the guise of fighting antisemitism in order to attack the Palestinian rights movement and enact its broader authoritarian agenda including dismantling higher education and targeting student activists. Trump and his allies use a controversial, dangerous, and discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism, which inaccurately conflates criticism of the State of Israel with antisemitism. The IHRA definition and its associated examples have been criticized and rejected by Jewish, Palestinian, Israeli, civil rights, and human rights organizations for years.

The first Trump administration embraced the discredited IHRA definition in a 2019 Executive Order and has reinforced it in another EO from January 2025. Over the last several months, the IHRA definition has been a tool in the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services’ broad attacks on universities, including their withholding billions in federal funds from institutions of higher education, and their egregious detainment of student activists. The Trump administration is now pushing universities to adopt this flawed definition of antisemitism, as part of a broader campaign of censorship and ideological control over universities. Many scholars, including Kenneth Stern, the author of the definition, have warned that Trump is using this definition to attack academic freedom and free speech.

"The IHRA definition prohibits experts from talking about well-documented historical and contemporary realities, such as the systemic racism in Israel that is expressed explicitly and in unashamed terms in Israel's own Jewish Nation-State Basic Law. The IHRA definition also requires us to censor truths about Israel’s genocide in Gaza documented by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a growing number of Holocaust and genocide scholars who describe the killing of more than 50,000 Palestinians, including over 18,000 children, as a genocide," noted Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University. "As a Jewish-Israeli scholar of the Holocaust who grew up with four grandparents who had survived the Holocaust, I reject this definition and I am proud to join dozens of Jewish scholars today in violating it and insisting on the value of our expertise and our scholarship.”

The intentional violations of the discredited IHRA definition took place across the country on April 17 as part of a larger “Day of Action” organized by the Coalition for Action in Higher Education, in partnership with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Jewish Voice for Peace, and other organizations.. Scores of other scholars, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and the Liberatory Jewish Studies Network, engaged in similar violations at rallies across the country and in recorded statements.

The flawed IHRA definition outlines several examples of “contemporary antisemitism” that dangerously and falsely conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. For example, the definition asserts that it is antisemitic to “draw.. comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” This provision is an egregious overreach that silences Holocaust scholars and Holocaust survivors who have found it necessary to draw comparisons.

At the AAUP-organized New York City rally in Foley Square, Marianne Hirsch, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and a scholar of Holocaust Memory at Columbia University said: “The widespread embrace of the confusing IHRA definition of antisemitism has created a crisis in my field of Genocide and Holocaust Studies. When I teach the history and memory of the Holocaust, I necessarily use historical analogy as a method of knowledge and inquiry. We learn things by comparing, as long as we do it with care. Right now, it is irresponsible to teach the Nazi persecution of Jews – which included ethnic cleansing, population transfer, starvation, expulsion and murder —without referring to the Israeli military’s brutal assault on Gaza. To do so is to violate the terms of the IHRA definition. Not to do so is to capitulate our intellectual integrity as scholars, our moral fiber as human beings and our sense of justice as citizens.”

For a full list of participants see: Over 30 Scholars of Antisemitism, Holocaust Studies, and Jewish History Challenge Trump’s Attack on Free Speech