Published by Algemeiner on 9/29/23; Story by Dion J. Pierre The Biden administration’s latest announcement on taking new steps to combat anti-Jewish discrimination is a major development in the right direction, but the US still has “unfinished business” when it comes to federal agencies adopting the world’s most widely accepted definition of antisemitism, according to a leading Jewish civil rights advocate. On Thursday, the White House announced that eight US federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, have for the first time formally recognized that Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — which prohibits discrimination in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance — also prohibits certain forms of antisemitism. The change in policy, which acknowledges that Jews are both a religious and ancestral group, is part of US President Joe Biden’s national strategy to counter antisemitism first unveiled in May. “Eight federal agencies clarified for the first time in writing that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits certain forms of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and related forms of discrimination in federally funded programs and activities,” the White House said in a statement. “These wide-ranging protections provide important tools to curb discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics and to better protect the civil rights of all Americans.” For decades, the American Jewish community was one of the only ancestral groups not covered by the law even as it expanded to provide protections for women and other minorities. However, as incidents of antisemitism increased in public institutions, change became vitally important, according to a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the US Department of Education. “This development is important because it reflects the acceptance by essentially the entire domestic wing of the federal government the notion that Jewish Americans are protected under Title VI, which was hotly contested for years and certainly had been rejected by the Department of Education prior to my tenure,” Kenneth Marcus — now the founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — told The Algemeiner. “The reason the Education Department has been resistant to this approach prior to my tenure is that the Civil Right Act of 1964 does not include religion.” Marcus added that the law makes some mentions of religion but was aimed primarily at prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, and national origin. “There was historically reluctance in the federal government to treat Jews as anything other than a religion, and for that reason, Jews were considered to be unprotected and had no federal civil rights protections when they were in elementary school, secondary school, or college and university,” he explained. The Department of Education became the first agency to declare that Title VI applies to Jewish Americans during the George W. Bush administration, when Marcus served as assistant secretary, in what has become known as the “Marcus Doctrine.” The policy, he told The Algemeiner, was controversial, with critics arguing that Jews are a White-adjacent people who either do not need or have transcended the need for federal protections safeguarding the civil rights of Americans of color. Marcus said that more work needs to be done, despite the Biden administration’s latest announcement. The key area that still needs to be addressed, he explained, concerns the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been embraced by dozens of governments and hundreds of civic institutions around the world. IHRA, an intergovernmental organization comprised of dozens of countries including the US and Israel, adopted a non-legally binding “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and well over 1,000 global entities, from countries to companies. The US State Department, the European Union, and the United Nations all use it. According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” IHRA provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state. The Biden administration’s national strategy to counter antisemitism, unveiled in May as the foundation of the federal government’s efforts to fight antisemitism, embraces elements of both the IHRA definition and the competing “Nexus Document.” The latter was written by a group of academics who argue that applying double standards to Israel and opposing Israel’s continuation as the nation-state of the Jewish people may not necessarily be antisemitic, creating tighter standards around when anti-Israel speech and activity is antisemitic. According to Marcus, the Biden administration remains in limbo when it comes to the IHRA definition. While he commended the administration’s efforts to implement its national strategy on combating antisemitism, he said that none of the eight agencies named in Thursday’s announcement have committed to using the IHRA definition. “There’s still unfinished business in terms of the administration’s approach to IHRA and making it applicable across the board,” he explained, defending the definition as a tool for standardizing the government’s approach to fighting antisemitism. “That’s the definition that really needs to be used across the board. It is incorporated into the executive order on combating antisemitism, and it’s really crucial that the agencies now recognize that it should be the basis on which they’re interpreting their newly recognized authority.” Marcus added that other areas also need to be addressed, especially concerning the US government including full recognition of Zionism as an inalienable element of the Jewish people. In 2019, former US President Donald Trump issued an executive order on combating antisemitism that affirmed civil rights protections for Jewish students and recognized Zionism’s centrality to Jewish identity. The Biden administration has for years now continuously delayed issuing new promised Title VI guidance from the Department of Education based on Trump’s executive order to protect Jewish students. Last month, the department issued separate guidance on how colleges and K-12 schools receiving federal funds should develop curricula that fosters “racially inclusive school communities.” At the time, Marcus described the guidance as a “mixed bag” when it came to how the guidance would impact the Jewish community. Thursday’s announcement from the White House comes amid rising antisemitic and anti-Zionist discrimination on college campuses across the US.