2025/04/30 by Sindre Bangstad · 2 voices · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2494669
openalex publication_date 2025/04/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism or the IHRA WDA, adopted by IHRA in 2016, and since adopted or endorsed by some 43 countries, has been central in the ongoing attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech relating to Palestine in a number of countries, and not the least in the USA and Germany. A non-scientific and problematic definition which has been severy criticized by scholars of antisemitism as well as human rights organisations, out of the eleven «contemporary examples of antisemitism» which accompany the definition yet are distinct from the definition itself, seven relate to speech about Israel. These examples, and especially examples number seven and eight, risk conflating critiques of Israel's long-standing settler-colonial practices with antisemitism, and have through the weaponization of the IHRA WDA in effect created and sustained a ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom and freedom of speech. This article presents the genealogy of the IHRA 2016 WDA and argues for its non-acceptance by academics and scholars committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech.