Ken Stern (Director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate) joins Amna and Jeff to discuss these urgent questions: Are campuses hotbeds of antisemitism? How do we define antisemitism in the first place? Is there a difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism? How have colleges handled the student protests around Gaza? Why are so many higher education institutions facing Title VI lawsuits? What counts as a “hostile” campus environment? How should we educate students about the Israel/Palestine conflict?

Show Notes

* International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism

* Kenneth Marcus, director of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, explains why universities and colleges should adopt the IHRA definition

* Ken Stern, bio (Bard; Wikipedia); see also this New Yorker profile

* Stern, The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate (University of Toronto Press, 2020)

* Bard College Center for the Study of Hate

* On quotas for Jewish students in higher education, see Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton

* Stern complements Wesleyan President Michael Roth for how he handled student protests—see Roth’s New York Times op-ed from the fall of 2024, “I’m a College President, and I Hope My Campus Is Even More Political This Year”

* Here is the poll that Stern mentions about how Jewish and Muslim students understand the phrase “from the river to the sea”

* full text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, including Title VI

* 2004 “Dear Colleague” Letter on Title VI and Title IX Religious Discrimination in Schools and Colleges from the Office of Civil Rights

* On how the Office of Civil Rights currently defines a “hostile environment,” see this 2023 “Dear Colleague” Letter on Shared Ancestry

* Donald J. Trump, Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism, December 11, 2019

* Here is the op-ed where Jared Kushner declares that “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism”: “President Trump Is Defending Jewish Students,” New York Times, December 11, 2019

* Donald J. Trump, Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, January 29, 2025. See also this White House “Fact Sheet” and Len Gutkin’s dispatch on the E.O. in the Chronicle of Higher Education

* The U.S. Department of Education maintains a list of pending Title VI cases here

* Crimson coverage of Harvard’s decision to adopt the IHRA definition available here and here

* on publishing Mein Kampf in Germany in 2016 for the first time since World War II, see coverage in the Guardian here and here

* On how Whitefish, Montana responded to a proposed march by white supremacists in 2016/17, see this New York Times article, “How a Small Town Silenced a Neo-Nazi Hate Campaign”

* We have written several pieces on student activism and the War in Gaza—see:

* “Colleges Are Cracking Down on Free Speech in the Name of ‘Inclusion’”

* “Student Activism is Integral to the Mission of Academe” &

* “Campus Protests Don’t Undermine the College Mission”

* The Chronicle of Higher Education has had some great coverage of the debates surrounding the IHRA definition; see here, here and here

* on “hate speech” laws, see Nadine Strossen’s superb 2018 book, HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship

* On the perils of confusing criticism of a government with attacks against a particular nationality, ethnicity or race, see this Chronicle Review piece about the censorship of a Chinese artist at George Washington University in 2022

* For a data-driven analysis of the state of antisemitism in the U.S. on campuses and beyond, see this piece by Stony Brook University sociologist Musa al-Gharbi

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