The Antisemitism Awareness Act Is Back

On February 5, Republican Representative Mike Lawler of New York reintroduced the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the House. The bill seeks to assist Department of Education investigations of discrimination involving Jewish students by clearly defining what speech or action can be considered antisemitic.

You may recall the original Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) was introduced on October 26, 2023, some two weeks after the events of October 7. It then passed 320-91 the following May, in the midst of widespread campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and rising antisemitism. However, the Senate version was never brought up for a vote. (A new Senate version has also been reintroduced by Democrat Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina.)

Like the original, the new House bill, which has bipartisan support from 68 House cosponsors, seeks to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition has been adopted by more than 40 countries and 35 U.S. states. However there has long been disagreement (including in the digital pages of Moment) over whether it goes too far in defining criticism of Israel as antisemitic. 

“[The AAA] would send a clear message that universities must take action to combat this hate in all forms,” explains Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York.

In introducing the new Antisemitism Awareness Act, Lawler referred to rampant antisemitism on college campuses. “This is unacceptable,” he said. “No person should feel unsafe, targeted or ostracized because of their faith—and the Antisemitism Awareness Act will stop it from happening.” 

Another co-sponsor of the act, Democrat Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, said the AAA would provide “state officials and law enforcement a clear framework for identifying and addressing antisemitism to hold harassers accountable.”

The text of the bill doesn’t detail what kind of disciplinary measures could be taken against any such “harasser,” but includes this passage:

In reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.) on the basis of race, color, or national origin, based on an individual’s actual or perceived shared Jewish ancestry or Jewish ethnic characteristics, the Department of Education shall take into consideration the definition of antisemitism as part of the Department’s assessment of whether the practice was motivated by antisemitic intent.

Lawler explained to Moment by email that the AAA would “give universities more tools to properly address the issue, ensuring Jewish students can learn and thrive in a safe environment,” adding it would send “a clear message that universities must take action to combat this hate in all forms” and would “prevent further incidents of harassment and discrimination.”

According to a report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released in January, 83 percent of Jewish college students surveyed either witnessed or experienced antisemitism on campus since October 2023, and over 50 percent of Jewish college students surveyed felt the need to hide their Judaism to be safe on their campus. 

As Dan Granot, ADL’s national director of antisemitism policy, puts it, “We are in a moment of crisis of rising antisemitism in the United States and around the world, and we need to make sure that the federal government has all available tools in its pocket to protect Jewish students and faculty,” adding, “Antisemitism is not on the left, it’s not on the right. It’s a human rights issue. The bill is overwhelmingly bipartisan as both parties recognize the urgent need to protect students.”

However, not everyone in either party agrees. Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who was the majority leader at the time, resisted the urging of many to bring the original AAA to a vote in the Senate last year. The assumption was he feared it would expose a divide between Senate Democrats who support the act and more progressive members who believe the IHRA definition should not be codified as a baseline because it unfairly characterizes all criticism of Israel as antisemitic. At the same time, some  far-right Christians in the House voted against the AAA for a different reason. Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia summed it up on X, tweeting that she opposed the act because it “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”

Nevertheless, Lawler is committed to seeing the bill pass. “Working with colleagues from both sides of the aisle, as well as with Jewish organizations and advocates nationwide, I’ve made it my mission to make sure this bill becomes a priority in the new Congress,” he says.

“It goes hand in hand with the Trump administration’s strategy of using accusations of antisemitism as a pretext for undermining educational and democratic institutions,” says Jonathan Jacoby of the Nexus Project.

While the act is meant to give the Department of Education a clear definition of antisemitism in order to investigate complaints on college campuses, the ongoing cuts at the department could complicate those efforts. The summary of the 2025 bill is listed as “still in progress.” However, the 2023 act named the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) as the body that would utilize the AAA to ensure equal rights and opportunities for Jewish students. The Trump administration’s gutting of the OCR surely affects those efforts; complaints of antisemitism would go through regional investigation teams of the OCR, seven of 12 of which have been fully eliminated, according to The New York Times. 

When asked about this, Gottheimer said: “I believe we should have a strong office of rights at the Department of Education, and gutting the Department of Education to me is not a smart strategy for our country.” He said he was most concerned about the resources that the department  needs in order to pursue Title VI complaints from students “who were subject to violent protests, blocked from going to the library or from classrooms or from taking exams or from their dorm rooms…there are a lot of complaints. I want to make sure that the Department of Education has the resources to pursue those complaints, and I think that the [IHRA] definition will help them.”

Other organizations that have endorsed the act include the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations; the American Jewish Committee; and Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America. 

Those opposing the Antisemitism Awareness Act include the American Civil Liberties Union and the author of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, who says he intended the definition to be more of a research tool as opposed to something codified into law through legislation. 

Jonathan Jacoby, national director of the Nexus Project, a nonprofit dedicated to combating antisemitism, opposes codifying the IHRA definition “or any other definition” and believes the AAA, if passed, will create a legal instrument to punish critics of Israel. “It goes hand in hand with the Trump administration’s strategy of using accusations of antisemitism as a pretext for undermining educational and democratic institutions,” he says.

Recent arrests and detainment of foreign students who participated in last spring’s pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations, such as Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, or otherwise engaged in “anti-Israel activism,” such as Rumeysa Ozturk from Tufts, raise new concerns. Both detainees were in the United States legally for their studies and made their pro-Palestine positions known. They were recently arrested by ICE, accused of antisemitic activity and abetting anti-Israel terror groups, and are being threatened with deportation. Could the AAA be used to bolster such actions by the government?

Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University who has previously written about his opposition to the AAA, believes that using the IHRA as a benchmark of antisemitism could be dangerous. “Under the definition, denying Jews the right to self-determination, applying double standards to Israel not demanded of other nations, accusing Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust, or drawing comparisons between Israeli policies and those of the Nazis, can all be considered antisemitic,” he writes in his new book, Israel: What Went Wrong? “For this reason, alternative definitions, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) and the Nexus Document, which take pains to make distinctions between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, should be used rather than the deeply flawed IHRA definition.”

Jacoby expressed a similar sentiment about how the law could be applied. “When someone is detained for [voicing] antisemitism, which under the AAA could include accusing Israel of racism, the initial reaction could be ‘that makes sense.’” Using the logic of the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, Jacoby says, the perpetrator could then be labeled pro-Hamas. “The accusation of antisemitism is the door-opener.” 

“There’s no reason that anybody should be opposed to this act,” says Gottheimer. He says he witnessed campus protests in person and heard “sickening comments” comparing Zionists to Nazis, promising a redo of October 7 and chanting “From the river to the sea,” which he believes is a call for genocide targeting Jewish students. “If this definition helps in stopping any of that hatred, that would be a very positive outcome,” he says.

When asked about concerns over how the act could be used to punish pro-Palestine and anti-Israel demonstrators, Gottheimer says, “There’s nothing controversial about this. Not only does it protect the First Amendment clearly, but it also will help stop antisemitism and hate.” 

Lawler’s office also rejected such concerns. “The AAA gives the president no new authority. It simply defines antisemitism under the Department of Education’s authorities granted in the Civil Rights Act,” says Caroline Hunt, Lawler’s press assistant, noting that Khalil and others “were detained by ICE for their support of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations and for providing false information on immigration forms, not because of illegal discriminatory activities.”

It remains to be seen if and when the Antisemitism Awareness Act will be voted on again and if Congress will be more or less divided on it this time around. One thing many Jewish Americans agree on is that since October 7, antisemitism has become a bigger problem and that something needs to be done. As Granot of the ADL puts it, “Combating antisemitism must remain a national priority.” How far people are willing to let the government go in that effort may become one more measure of how divided the Jewish American community is at this time.