Students Supporting Israel (SSI) hosted Louis D. Brandeis Center For Human Rights Under Law President Alyza Lewin, alongside Rabbi Andrew Baker, the Director of International Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Congress (AJC), at its Define it to Fight it online conference in a talk about the importance of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. Since the creation of the definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) in 2016, and its subsequent adoption by scores of governments, political institutions, and increasingly, US state governments and university administrations, the definition has received pushback from groups that claim it will be used as a tool to curb free speech. These groups take particular issue with the definition’s illustrative examples, several of which relate to antisemitic animus directed towards Israel. In her portion of the event, Ms. Lewin addressed the controversy, highlighting the importance of the examples to the IHRA definition itself. She explained that the IHRA definition and its examples form a single unified text, and that adopting the definition without its examples would be like adopting the Preamble without the US Constitution. The IHRA definition, Ms. Lewin said, is not a tool designed to curtail free speech, rather it is meant to educate, so that antisemitism can be labeled as such and effectively confronted. Ms. Lewin also addressed the phenomenon of competing definitions of antisemitism popping up, whose major difference from the IHRA definition is how they approach Israel and the Jewish right to self-determination. These alternative definitions, she pointed out, have not been adopted by any governments or international entities. Rather, they were drafted by groups that wish to engage in conduct IHRA would find antisemitic, like denying the Jewish right to self-determination, without being subject to the unwelcome label. In his portion of the talk, Rabbi Andrew Baker recalled his experience in the early 2000s working to develop a definition amidst surging antisemitism in western Europe. At the time, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) was commissioned to conduct a report on antisemitism, but the organization’s efforts were necessarily limited because its monitors were not equipped with a single and clear definition with which to work. Out of this problem the IHRA definition arose. Its examples were meant to illustrate easily recognizable forms of antisemitism like outright violence against Jews, as well as instances of antisemitism that are less clear to people not familiar with the topic, like Holocaust denial, and antisemitic conspiracies. The full talk can be viewed here.