At the Bulwark, Cathy Young does her typically brilliant job of parsing the Antisemitism Awareness Act passed by the House by the crushing bipartisan vote of 320-91. The crux of the act is to adopt the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and to make clear that antisemitism is included under Title VI, prohibiting discrimination in education on the basis of race, color and national origin.

What’s wrong with fixing a legally “non-binding” definition of antisemitism in education? As with so many things, it goes vague and overbroad at the fringes.

But the IHRA text also states that “manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” and offers several examples such as:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Given what’s happening on campuses and in the streets, particularly the confusion over whether calling for the destruction of Israel and death of Jews is antisemitic, this long-standing bill from the BDS days finally got some traction.

While the legislation is a Republican project—the lead sponsor is New York Republican Michael Lawler, and most of the cosponsors were Republicans—Democrats also rallied behind it; of 212 House Democrats, 133 voted for the bill. And yet critics across the political spectrum, from the American Civil Liberties Union to libertarian Reason magazine columnist Robby Soave to right-wing pundit Matt Walsh to anti-woke education crusader Christopher Rufo to left-wing populist (and strong Israel supporter) Batya Ungar-Sargon, have denounced the bill as not only a terrible idea, but an unconstitutional one.

And initially, I agreed, as Cathy noted in her piece.

Attorney and blogger Scott Greenfield, who initially assailed the legislation as “one of the dumbest and most unconstitutional bills ever introduced,” later came to a similar conclusion:

At the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg joined the chorus condemning the “dangerous” bill “which would codify, for the purpose of enforcing federal civil rights law in higher education, a definition of antisemitism that includes rejection of Israel as a Jewish state.” But she then notes the Democratic Congressman, former con law prof and occasional progressive darling Jamie Raskin supported the bill.

Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat and former constitutional law professor, wrote a statement explaining the problems with the bill at length, before justifying his “yes” vote with a kind of defeated shrug: “At this moment of anguish and confusion over the dangerous surge of antisemitism, authoritarianism and racism all over the country and the world, it seems unlikely that this meaningless ‘gotcha’ legislation can help much — but neither can it hurt much, and it may now bring some people despairing over manifestations of antisemitism a sense of consolation.”

There remains a question of whether the non-binding definition formulated by IHRA will serve to illuminate the scope of antisemitism or be weaponized by some bureaucrat in the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to silence criticism of Israel, which is and certainly should be protected speech, as a form of prohibited Title VI discrimination.

Of course, given how the current bureaucrat has handled Title IX definitions, there is nothing to preclude the office from crafting as vague, overbroad and dangerous a definition as she wants now, so that while this law provides Congressional imprimatur that Catherine Lhamon lacks for Title IX, it merely offers the opportunity to expand and weaponize the definition if the bureaucrat is so inclined to use it against universities.

Is this a bad law, a nothing-burger or a  fair, albeit non-binding, means to stop antisemitism on campus? Given the current state of campus unrest, there is a strong probability that conflation of criticism of Israel will leak into ordinary Jew hatred, as it already has in some instances. Will this help to stem the tide? Given that Zionism is the movement for Israel as a Jewish state, does the vilification of Zionists and calls for the eradication of Israel include a call for the death of Jews?

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