.jpg)
A central plank of the current assault on academic freedom and critical thought in the USA, Germany, the UK and Australia has been the weaponizing allegations of antisemitism against university faculty, administrations and students. The 2016 IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) Non-Legally Binding Working Definition of Antisemitism (the 2016 IHRA WDA) has so far been adopted or endorsed by some 45 countries. Though heavily criticized, the 2016 IHRA WDA and its accompanying “eleven illustrative examples of antisemitism” – seven of which relate to Israel, and risk conflating critique of Israel with antisemitism - has been remarkably successful. The 2016 IHRA WDA grew out of the discourse on ‘new antisemitism’, and forms part of ongoing attempts to redesignate antisemitism as a predominantly left-wing rather than right-wing phenomenon. It must also be seen in the context of Israel’s current attempts to build new alliances with historically antisemitic far-right political formations in Europe and the US. In the US, the openly stated aim of many adherents of the definition is to rid US universities of ‘pro-Palestinian’ faculty altogether, and to suppress pro-Palestinian speech, thus creating and sustaining a ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom and freedom of speech. Available studies suggest that the 2016 IHRA WDA has adversely affected the academic freedom of scholars working on the Middle East and Palestine in particular. In this lecture, Sindre Bangstad will present the background to the 2016 IHRA WDA and the critique of it, and outline why it poses a threat to academic freedom.
Sindre Bangstad is a Norwegian social anthropologist, and Research Professor at KIFO (Institute for Church, Religion and Worldview Research) in Oslo, Norway. The author of ten monographs and edited volumes, he has as part of ongoing research on the 2016 IHRA WDA published the essay “Palestine, Israel and academic freedom in South Africa” in HERRI#11 Sept 2025, and the article “The Palestine Exception to Academic Freedom and the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism” in The Journal Of Imperial and Commonwealth History 53 (3) 2025: 689-700. Bangstad will also publish an 80 pp. research report in Norwegian on the topic in 2025.