Universities Australia's IHRA-like definition of antisemitism is incredibly more far-reaching than may appear.
The follow on effects of conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism are hard to overstate.
The ABC’s announcement yesterday that Australia’s 39 universities have endorsed a new definition of antisemitism is deeply concerning. Much more so than may appear at first glance1.
The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, the Jewish Council of Australia and Amnesty International have already put out dire warnings.
The adoption and enforcement of the new definition, which tends to allow for the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in some cases, undermines the foundational principles, and thus also the role, of universities in liberal societies. To fulfil their intellectual and political mission, universities require both a sound conceptual framework, and an institutional context that guarantees the integrity of that framework’s application via the nurturing and enforcement of mutual respect, equal rights, and academic freedom.
By softening the conceptual differences between Jewish identity and Zionism, the new definition proposed by Universities Australia fails the core principles of intellectual inquiry, education, as well as its own stated goal of fighting antisemitism. It fails on two levels:
1) At the conceptual level, the following two statements are observably true:
a. Not all Jewish people are committed to / identify with Zionism (both secular and religious Judaism have a long history of anti-Zionism)
b. Not all Zionists are Jewish (many non-Jewish people, secular and religious, believe in and are committed to the Zionist project).
Deductive reasoning - the process of drawing logically valid conclusions from premises, and the foundation of Western intellectual inquiry since Aristotle - automatically highlights that concluding that one term infers the other categorically, or that the two are in any way synonyms, is logically false (not valid).
The consequences of this are hard to overstate: a definitionally false statement or policy will necessarily run into practical enforcement paradoxes all the while precluding our ability to address these paradoxes by thinking them through together, rigorously.
2) At the practical level, the definition endorsed by Universities Australia explicitly states that “substituting the word 'Zionist' for 'Jew' does not eliminate the possibility of speech being antisemitic”. This is indeed true. However, this shows that Universities Australia is concerned about the misuse of the term Zionism, not about its proper use. This should call for pause: further misuse and conflation of language and logical connections will not resolve the stated problem, but accentuate it.
Any word in language can be misused by anyone at any time to convey something else than the original/literal meaning of the word (e.g. words as mundane as pig or dog, or more complex, such as populist, globalist, fascist, etc). This is not always bad (this is how we make jokes for example), nor is this a new challenge for sound scholarship and education, rather, it has been a perennial challenge, a challenge that has so far failed to ever be resolved by conflation and (self) censure. Inductive reasoning - drawing probable conclusions from past observation, the other arm of rational thought - thus confirms the faith we have so far put in formal reasoning: logical consistency tends to solve logical and political problems, logical inconsistency tends to either produce them or prevent us from resolving them through agreement rather than through force.
Up until now, universities have sought to tackle this challenge not by stifling open discussion, but by providing and cultivating the tools and frameworks necessary to allow for critical inquiry and discussion - political and otherwise. Up until now, universities stood their ground against political expediency that conflates, confuses, obfuscates and censures rigorously defined terms that enable humanity to address the challenges it faces. Up until now, universities have provided clarity, consistency and transparency as regards to the protocols and procedures that underpin academic inquiry, they have refused vagueness, arbitrariness and the culture of fear and self-censure that ensues and within which no one feels safe. Up until now, universities understood that all of the above are prerequisites for their staff to fill their mentoring role and teach their classes as well as for students to engage constructively.
Universities in Australia and the Australian state(s) already have laws and codes of conduct in place that condemn and punish hate speech, which indeed often uses slurs - i.e. the misuse of words. If it is the misuse, rather than the proper use of the term Zionism that Universities Australia is hoping to stem with this new definition, then it is incumbent upon them to demonstrate how the definitional conflation they effectively propose would help stem hate speech against Jewish people, rather than undermine universities’ own mission statement as well as undermine their ability to tackle actual antisemitism on campuses.
Much of law and policy making relies on spotting and highlighting definitional and logical inconsistencies, given that these necessarily lead to practical inconsistencies: de facto unenforceability or arbitrary enforcement - both of which directly contradict the proclaimed goals of the policy or law as well as the very idea of designing law and policy that produce intended consequences.
In other words, allowing for the conflation of the two terms in any situation is contradictory, both formally and practically, it allows for more confusion, not more clarity, which in turn undermines not only our ability to tackle challenges such as the rise of antisemitism, but also undermines the very frameworks we had in place to resolve any problem at all.
Explicitly refusing to use logic in one place, is not merely an isolated breach of logic, it is an implicit yet actual renouncement of logic as the most reliable tool we have to adjudicate contested matters. The implications are somewhat world-shattering, not necessarily instantly, but in the long run, as a necessary logical consequence.
Here are some illustrations of the logical inconsistencies the new definition leads to:
The new definition undermines the very possibility of exploring the concrete political solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Indeed, as the Jewish Council of Australia underlines “[T]he definition’s inclusion of ‘calls for the elimination of the State of Israel’ would mean, for instance, that calls for a single binational democratic state, where Palestinians and Israelis have equal rights, could be labelled antisemitic.”
The new definition tends to reduce Jewish identity to political commitments. This is not only false (as pointed above: not all Jewish people are Zionist and not all Zionist are Jewish), it is also dangerous and in direct contradiction with the fight against antisemitism. Even if the majority of Jewish people supported Zionism, racial and religious identity should be kept separate from the political persuasion of group members as an intrinsic part of the group’s identity. Such conflation risks producing and/or reinforcing the harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way or necessarily have a shared political agenda - the crux of antisemitic sentiment. The definition already singles out both the state of Israel and the Jewish people as a whole, no such definition is proposed for any other state or people.
Finally, the new definition raises real questions as to which factual statements and underlying principles are permitted in the classroom. If the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and most respected Non-Governmental Organisations, with their expertise, rigorous protocols, universal mandate, universal principles and observations on the ground come to the conclusion that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and is currently committing war crimes and crimes against humanity; is it not the role of universities to relay this information, which stands for the closest thing we have to universal rule of law and inalienable human rights for all? Is it not entirely consistent to condemn observable wrongful deeds on the basis of universal principles and evidence rather than condemn particular identities and peoples on the basis of prejudice? Would these factual reports and legal decisions now be construed as antisemitic depending on how an ad hoc definition is interpreted in each particular case, according to good, but also bad faith actors? And if that is the case, is this not a direct attack on basic evidence, expertise, due process, democratic mandates, law and human rights, rather than a warranted fight against antisemitism?
Given the lack of logical consistency of the definition, its inconsistent enforceability, and the consequent weakening of the entire rational and legal frameworks with which we have previously resolved academic debates as well as hate speech and discrimination, the only logical conclusion is that this new definition disserves foundational academic principles as well as the fight for justice and against antisemitism and racism.
In turn, this makes it straightforwardly impossible for many academic staff to teach their classes or for students to learn the tools of critical inquiry (e.g. politics, law, history, etc.). For those less directly impacted by the definition, it nonetheless sets a precedent for arbitrariness and inconsistency in academia and in political conflict resolution, something that should alarm everyone.
The direct effects of this definition will be the emergence of intractable contradictions for students and staff, the silencing of debate, the stifling of critique and the undermining of the grounds for dialogue, intellectual inquiry, and learning across Australia2.
This remains to be confirmed, Universities Australia was not available for comment according to the ABC.
This first post is somewhat in tension with this substack’s handle. I am working on it. Meaning, like justice, is in the struggle.