Student demonstrators lock arms to guard potential authorities against reaching fellow pro-Palestinian protesters who barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images
By Hannah Feuer
May 28, 2025
A new law in Kansas makes it a special offense to wear a mask while protesting Israel.
In Florida, after legislation was passed targeting antisemitism, the state university system asked administrators to review any course material mentioning “Israeli,” “Palestinian,” and “Zionist,” among other terms.
And in Oklahoma, the public school system was required to appoint a special coordinator to investigate claims of antisemitic discrimination.
All three instances rely on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which classifies a broad swath of criticism against Israel as a form of discrimination against Jews.
“For too long, this community has lived in a space of uncertainty without clear protections,” said Emily Gise, a Republican state lawmaker in Oklahoma, after her state passed a package of legislation endorsing the IHRA definition of antisemitism. “By putting a definition into law, we’re helping ensure that harmful acts are no longer overlooked or misunderstood.”
The definition of antisemitism that governments rely on may seem like a semantic debate, but the recent flurry of state legislation shows its impact on how crime data is tracked, which incidents at public universities lead to discipline, and what is considered acceptable speech in the classroom.
Those are the stakes behind a renewed debate over the IHRA definition, which continued to cement its dominance at the state level over the past two months, as Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska and Tennessee all passed bills or issued executive orders reiterating their support for it. Similar bills are being debated in the New York state legislature and in the New Jersey governor’s race. Meanwhile, a Congressional bill that would require the federal government to rely on the definition has stalled.
Many of the new state laws build on previous resolutions endorsing the IHRA definition, integrating it into codes of conduct at universities and public K-12 schools. That could give administrators more leeway to classify ambiguous incidents as antisemitic — and discipline students accordingly.
“Once you’ve adopted the IHRA definition, there really isn’t any question. You’re going to shut down all sorts of free speech,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “You say ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine is free’ — done, you’re guilty of antisemitism. You say that Israel is a racist state — done, antisemitism.”
What is the IHRA definition, and why is it controversial?
IHRA defines antisemitism broadly as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”
The controversy centers on 11 examples IHRA provides of how antisemitism could appear. The list, originally published by the European Union in 2005 to help police classify hate crimes, includes promoting stereotypes about Jewish power, denying the Holocaust and accusing Jews of killing Jesus.
Particularly at issue are the six examples that focus on Israel. One describes holding Israel to a higher standard than other democratic countries, while another says it may be antisemitic to compare “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
But perhaps the most contested example in the definition is “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” including by claiming that Israel is “a racist endeavor.”
This effectively classifies most expressions of anti-Zionism — opposition to the existence of a Jewish state in Israel — as a form of antisemitism, and is sometimes used to suggest that accusing Israel of apartheid or genocide is also antisemitic.
(Hundreds of Jewish academics endorsed an alternative definition in 2021 called the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which more narrowly defines antisemitism in a manner that excludes many expressions of anti-Zionism. The Biden administration strategy to counter antisemitism referenced IHRA and yet another definition, Nexus, an endeavor led by liberal Jewish academics to tackle antisemitism while preserving free speech.)
Many major American Jewish organizations support the IHRA definition, though they differ widely on how it should be applied.
Kenneth Stern, lead author of the document that eventually became the IHRA definition, has since become an outspoken critic of its use as a legal or disciplinary code.
He compared government adoption of the IHRA definition to the adoption of a law defining racism as opposition to removing a Confederate statue, or as criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement.
“There’s no political definitions of racism that were created for a similar purpose,” Stern said. “If you try to put that into disciplinary codes or what a professor should teach, we’d see the problem.”
Todd Gutnick, a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League, which supports the use of IHRA, pushed back against the idea that the definition has been misapplied in a legal context. Gutnick emphasized that breaching the IHRA definition is not a crime on its own, but IHRA can be a useful tool in determining if there is an antisemitic element to a separate criminal offense.
The ADL has long supported IHRA as “the preeminent definition and learning tool to understand antisemitism and its many manifestations,” Gutnick wrote in a statement, noting that the IHRA definition is used by more than 40 countries, the European Parliament, and more than 35 U.S. states.
What’s behind the flurry of state legislation?
Government adoption of the IHRA definition is not new. The federal government has relied on variations of the IHRA definition since 2010, when the State Department endorsed its precursor adopted by the European Union.
Proponents of the definition got another win in 2019, when Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition while investigating allegations of antisemitic discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
But federal efforts to codify the definition have since sputtered. Biden’s national plan to counter antisemitism referred to — but did not embrace — the IHRA definition. And the Antisemitism Awareness Act — federal legislation that would require the Department of Education to use the IHRA definition as the sole standard for investigating antisemitic discrimination — has stalled in Congress over bipartisan concern about its impact on free speech.
In the meantime, many states are moving forward on their own. States’ legislation codifying IHRA “give teeth to Title VI,” according to the Combat Antisemitism Movement — a group founded by Republican megadonor Adam Beren that has led advocacy for state adoption.
In Oklahoma, for example, the new law requires the state to appoint a “Title VI coordinator” to monitor and investigate antisemitic discrimination in public K-12 schools and universities using the IHRA framework. The law states that educational institutions must treat discrimination motivated by antisemitism in “an identical manner to discrimination motivated by race.”
In Kansas, the law adopting IHRA specifies that wearing masks to conceal one’s identity with the intent to harass Jews on school property is antisemitic — a clause widely interpreted as a response to campus protests. The law also declares as antisemitic any vandalism against Jewish property and any use or funding of antisemitic curriculum.
After Florida adopted the IHRA definition in 2024, a university administrator directed staff to review courses for signs of “antisemitism or anti-Israel bias.” Any class syllabus containing the keywords Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish or Jews was flagged for review.
As part of that vetting, the University banned a textbook titled “Terrorism and Homeland Security,” which state Rep. Randy Fine described as “pro-Muslim terror” — though Fine later told The New York Times he hadn’t actually read the book.
Other states have used the IHRA definition to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement. In 2022, Iowa simultaneously adopted bills codifying the IHRA definition of antisemitism and restricting state business with companies that boycott Israel. At the time, Rep. Mary Wolfe, a Democrat, told the Des Moines Register that “the sole purpose” of the bill appeared to be targeting Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, after the ice cream brand halted sales in what it called “occupied Palestinian territories.”
The definition has also been applied in a criminal justice context. In Arizona, a 2022 law requires the state to use the IHRA definition in the reporting and sentencing of hate crimes.
Virginia similarly adopted IHRA in 2023 “as a tool and guide for training, education, recognizing, and combating antisemitic hate crimes or discrimination.” Since then, the definition has been used in training sessions with police officers, which Gov. Glen Youngkin (R-VA) promoted on X as “the Extremism & Hamas in the U.S. training.”
Still, not all attempts at enforcing the IHRA definition have been successful. In Texas, the state’s 2021 adoption of IHRA gained force in 2024 when Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) signed an executive order mandating that all public universities revise their anti-discrimination policies to incorporate the IHRA definition. The Council on American-Islamic Relations challenged the order in court — and won — after a federal judge ruled that the policy violated the First Amendment.
Elsewhere, the IHRA definition has been cited in lawsuits seeking to shut down pro-Palestinian campus events. In 2019, lawyers for students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst cited the IHRA definition in filing a lawsuit seeking to cancel a discussion panel on campus titled “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights.” A judge ruled in favor of allowing the panel to proceed, writing that he could not take action against the event solely because it “fits someone’s definition of anti-Semitism.”
Massachusetts endorsed the IHRA definition a few years later.
