In the wake of the stabbing of two Jewish men in north London last week, Keir Starmer has vowed to get tough on campus antisemitism. As part of a wider counter-extremism plan, the Prime Minister yesterday pledged a £7 million investment to tackle discrimination and teach about the Holocaust in schools and universities. Higher-education institutions will be expected to undertake audits of antisemitism on their campuses, outlining what they have done about it, with “zero tolerance” for delays and leniency. “We will hold them to account,” warned Starmer, adding that he expects the Arts Council to use its power to “suspend, withdraw and claw back” funding from grant recipients found guilty of antisemitism.

Following yesterday’s speech, many will wonder whether Starmer is going full Donald Trump in his efforts to eradicate anti-Jewish discrimination in universities. In 2019, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to address the issue, using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a legislative guide.

Then, in the wake of the October 7 attacks in 2023 and the responses of anti-Israel student groups at several Ivy League institutions, a number of university presidents were hauled in front of a congressional committee to answer for campus antisemitism. When asked whether a call for genocide of Jews violated campus rules, Harvard president Claudine Gay and the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill replied that it depended on the context. Following outrage from politicians, trustees and donors, both resigned from their posts.

Trump’s re-election in late 2024 kicked off a new round of action, and elite universities, including Columbia, Harvard and Penn, once again found themselves in the crosshairs of the administration. Violations of civil rights law on antisemitism grounds, drawing on the IHRA definition, served as the key rationale for threatening cuts to federal funding.

The laudable desire to combat antisemitism must, however, be balanced against the need to protect freedom of expression. The IHRA definition, for instance, includes the following within its ambit: “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” (i.e. saying Israel’s existence is inherently racist), “applying double standards” to Israel (demanding behavior not expected of other nations or disproportionately focusing on Israeli atrocities), using Nazi comparisons for Israel, and “holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel”. This goes well beyond the First Amendment and was not intended to be used as a legal standard.

Under this definition, many far-Left faculty members and students in the UK would be punished for antisemitism. These people might hold ugly views, but we should still defend their right to freedom of speech within the law. Universities should nonetheless enforce time, place and manner restrictions on speech that are facially neutral across beliefs and groups. Protests should be limited in number and duration, and kept away from Jewish areas or gatherings. Those who block, harass or attack Jewish students must be punished or expelled. Universities have, in numerous cases, failed in their duty and should be held to account.

Where I would depart from Government logic is with respect to speech codes or off-campus activity. Here, the law must be our guide. The risk is that anything narrower than the law will be demanded for other groups. We have seen this with Prevent, where measures designed for Islamist extremism were repurposed to go after “far-Right” activity, defined loosely enough to be weaponized by progressive activist groups such as Hope Not Hate and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even the threat of legal action can increase censorship inside institutions and chill speech.

While most British Jews hold some attachment to Israel and find anti-Israel slogans upsetting, it is difficult to definitively identify when this speech becomes antisemitism. Even allegedly offensive phrases such as “from the river to the sea” could be interpreted as non-violent post-Zionism. Acting on the basis of subjective perceptions or an uncharitably elastic interpretation of speech may well be weaponized by progressive institutions such as universities to clamp down on words which offend thin-skinned defenders causes including transgender ideology and pro-immigration activism. Universities should punish harassment and regulate protest. Yet it would be a mistake to adopt broad, subjective definitions of hate speech that violate the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act.

---

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and author of Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Led to a Cultural Revolution (Forum Press, 4 July).

epkaufm

---