On July 1, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law Chairman and CEO Kenneth L. Marcus was a featured speaker during last week’s Christians United for Israel’s annual summit. Marcus spoke on a panel moderated by Sandra Parker, the Chairwoman of the Board of CUFI Action Fund, alongside Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, about the importance of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. The Act, which passed the House of Representatives in 2024, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism into law, enabling the federal government to more effectively identify and combat anti-Semitism on college campuses and beyond. “The nickname will eventually stick. I often refer to you as the Godfather of the Antisemitism Awareness Act,” Parker said to Chairman Marcus, at the opening of the panel. Chairman Marcus, who served as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump and as Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, began thinking about the issue more than twenty years ago. “I saw the first murmurings, the first stirrings of anti-Semitism on college campuses,” Chairman Marcus said. “I realized that there were no civil rights protections being offered to Jewish American [college students] … I came up with the idea that the federal government needed to use a definition of anti-Semitism that would be standard and used consistently.” The IHRA definition acknowledges that individuals are free to criticize the State of Israel. According to the IHRA definition, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” The definition also makes clear that manifestations of anti-Semitism under the definition “might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” Miyares spoke about how Virginia has used the IHRA definition, which the state adopted in 2023, to combat anti-Semitism in a bipartisan manner. “It has been incredibly useful. You can’t defeat what you refuse to define,” Miyares said. On our college campuses, where there is so much moral confusion, [the IHRA definition] provides moral clarity.” Chairman Marcus thanked Miyares for his and Virginia’s efforts to aggressively fight anti-Semitism. Both Chairman Marcus and Miyares refuted the canard that the IHRA definition stifles free speech. “The Antisemitism Awareness Act applies to conduct, not speech” Chairman Marcus said. “Under the Antisemitism Awareness Act, you can say whatever you want. You can say things that are true or untrue, fair-minded or biased… As long as you don’t engage in vandalism or assault, or things of that sort, you can say whatever you want.” “It is action and conduct, not speech,” Miyares said, agreeing with Chairman Marcus’s position. “Blocking Jewish students from attending Hillel is not a first amendment issue. That’s action… Taking over an academic building at Columbia is not free speech, that is action. Creating a quote-on-quote Jew-free zone… is not free speech. That is action.” Marcus was asked by Parker about the importance of including the IHRA definition in K-12 codes of conduct, in addition to college campuses. “Nowadays we are seeing in high schools around the country some of the same rot, some of the same hate, that we had only been seeing on college campuses,” Chairman Marcus said. “So yes, it is important in K-12 as well as higher education.” On the same day as the panel, the Brandeis Center filed a complaint with Miyares’s office on behalf of a Jewish family against the Nysmith School for violating the Virginia Human Rights Act. According to the complaint, the families’ two daughters, both in sixth grade, and their son, in second grade, were expelled after informing the headmaster that their daughter had been subjected to bullying based on her Jewish faith. The complaint describes an incident in October 2024 when students created an artistic rendering of Adolph Hitler in response to an assignment calling for the depiction of “strong historical leaders.” “My office is actively looking into it,” Miyares posted on X after the Brandeis Center filed the complaint, in response to an article in The Washington Free Beacon about Nysmith. “These are disturbing allegations.” Miyares also spoke on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham. “If what’s alleged in here is true, that absolutely meets that definition of a violation of the Virginia Human Rights Act,” Miyares said. The Brandeis Center, in collaboration with the Anti-Defamation League and Mayer Brown, recently also filed a brief with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that the Concord-Carlisle Regional School District in Massachusetts failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. Watch the full discussion here: Authors: Asher Boiskin and Ben GoldenJuly 3, 2025