BY RANA JALEEL
As chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, I do not make it a habit to respond to criticism that does not engage with the issues raised in Committee A reports. I will make an exception for Don Eron’s “The AAUP’s Title VI Statement Denies Reality” because it was published by the AAUP’s own Academe Blog as a critique of Committee A’s September 2025 report, On Title VI, Discrimination, and Academic Freedom.
That report examines the question of whether speech, expression, and programming targeted by recent Title VI investigations qualify as legally actionable discrimination. Unwelcome or even discriminatory speech does not inevitably violate Title VI. Antidiscrimination law leaves daylight between subjectively offensive or unwelcome speech—including political speech criticizing the state of Israel and its actions—and legally actionable discrimination. For the purposes of Title VI, actions must take the form of discriminatory harassment that is severe, pervasive, or persistent enough to lead to the denial of educational benefits or access. The report also addresses the severity and scale of the Trump administration’s attempts to redefine various forms of discrimination and, in the process, to compromise faculty and university autonomy and erode democratic norms on and off campus. The report is not an attempt to adjudicate the experience of antisemitism but instead to demonstrate how Title VI, like Title IX, has been used to create an enforcement apparatus that sidesteps long-established AAUP-recommended procedures of shared governance and compromises academic freedom.
Eron ignores this entirely.
To Eron, the report “relies on a claim by Rashid Khalidi” that the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Act (IHRA) definition of antisemitism “absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred.” While Eron agrees that “no one can dispute that, technically speaking, antisemitism and antizionism are different things,” he nonetheless asserts that there is, for some of the public, “a one-to-one ratio between antisemitism and antizionism.” While this may be true, Eron suggests that the AAUP should heed this and understand that “antizionism is the classic coded language of antisemites.”
Committee A disagrees.
So does Kenneth Stern, one of the authors of the IHRA definition.
And so do the courts.
In written testimony presented to the US Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2024, Stern warned of “the danger of enshrining binary definitions of complex matters into simple legal equations,” advising “that adoption of the IHRA definition, which is being used to promote the mirror-image binary, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, would . . . be disastrous. Antizionism is sometimes clearly antisemitic, it is sometimes clearly not antisemitic, and it is sometimes simply unclear.” Stern further noted that he might “disagree with . . . young [anti-Zionist] Jews about Zionism, but I’m not going to call them antisemites. I certainly don’t want the government to do this, to effectively come down on one side or the other of a deep, and sometimes visceral, communal divide.”
Where Eron sees calls to protect speech critical of the state of Israel and Zionism as cover for antisemitism, courts have recognized instead how overly broad definitions of antisemitism that attempt to constrain political speech have posed distinct threats to the integrity of federal antidiscrimination law, the First Amendment, and academic freedom. The Trump administration has used the conflation of political criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism as an excuse to withhold billions in federal funding from universities across the country. Primarily citing pro-Palestinian speech protected by the First Amendment and academic freedom,Trump’s multiagency “Task Force to Combat Antisemitism” has justified these cuts by accusing colleges and universities of creating an antisemitic hostile environment. But many courts have not been persuaded. Federal District Court Judge Allison Burroughs, for example, issued a permanent injunction against the Trump administration’s withholding of federal funds from Harvard. The court concluded that the Trump administration “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of . . . the First Amendment and Title VI.” Meanwhile, in a case involving pro-Palestine activity at MIT, the First Circuit rejected efforts “to stifle anti-Zionist speech by labeling it inherently antisemitic,” noting an “ongoing debate as to the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism—debate that our constitutional scheme resolves through discourse, not judicial fiat.”
Eron’s arguments feed into the Trump administration’s strategy of obscuring its perversion of federal antidiscrimination law through debate about the relationships between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Instead of calling us antisemites, Eron argues that the AAUP has “no idea what it’s talking about.”
Our Committee A members and report drafters–Black, Jewish, Muslim, and more—are no strangers to the complexities of experiences of discrimination. We also know, as the report notes, that “the Trump administration has wielded Title VI with the goals of discrediting institutions of higher education, compromising academic freedom and institutional autonomy, and unmooring the Civil Rights Act from its foundational commitments to addressing structures of discrimination that prevent educational access.” We share the sentiments of a recent public letter signed by 550 US rabbis and cantors: “We cannot allow the fight against antisemitism to be twisted into a wedge issue, used to justify policies that target immigrants and other minorities, suppress free speech, or erode democratic norms.”
The goals of the AAUP are to promote academic freedom and shared governance. This requires opposition to all actions that threaten them as matters of principle, not tactics of public appeasement. Eron summons the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure to counsel against alienating “public support.” Yet, the Declaration warns of “the dangers [to higher education] connected with … an overwhelming and concentrated public opinion” The Declaration in fact requires the insulation of professional scholars from public influence or outside considerations, noting that “to the degree that professional scholars, in the formation and promulgation of their opinions, are, or by the character of their tenure appear to be, subject to any motive other than their own scientific conscience and a desire for the respect of their fellow experts, to that degree the university teaching profession is corrupted; its proper influence upon public opinion is diminished and vitiated; and society at large fails to get from its scholars, in an unadulterated form, the peculiar and necessary service which it is the office of the professional scholar to furnish.” As Michael Meranze, Joan Wallach Scott, and I have written, “‘tactical’ abandonment of our core principles is simply not an option . . . Academic freedom is a principle, not a chess move.”
In that spirit, the Title VI report concludes, “allegations of discrimination must not be used to undermine entire bodies of knowledge; to demonize student, staff, and faculty protest; to undercut or eliminate shared governance; and otherwise to destroy the possibility of democratic higher education. Especially in times of controversy, campus antidiscrimination efforts demand renewed and explicit dedication to the principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and free expression. Faculty members must remain stewards of knowledge for the good of the public—all of the public—not those who would deny or opportunistically exploit the complexities of free inquiry to suit their interests alone.”
Rana Jaleel is chair of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
Clarifications…
Rana Jaleel, chair of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure: “I teach courses that reflect my work in critical queer, feminist, and ethnic studies, security studies, and law. In all of my classes, I teach about Palestine.
Committee A’s September 2025 report, On Title VI, Discrimination, and Academic Freedom.: “University administrations (among them Harvard’s and Columbia’s) have exacerbated the situation by conflating political criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism.” “As Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, explains, under the IHRA definition, ‘which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.’” (Professors Jaleel and Khalidi, what about the genocide first perpetrated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on 10/7/23 and thereafter with the outside help of Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran?)
Kenneth Stern, one of the authors of the IHRA definition: “Antizionism is sometimes clearly antisemitic, it is sometimes clearly not antisemitic, and it is sometimes simply unclear.” Prof. Jaleel, who teaches about Palestine in all the classes she teaches, is less than fully candid when it comes to Stern’s proprietary claim with regard to the IHRA, failing to say that his objections to its use has been hotly contested by others [https://brandeiscenter.com/who-wrote-the-ihra-working-definition-of-anti-semitism/]
Anti-Zionism may not always be antisemitism, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t often antisemitic. Since 10/7 anti-Zionists have effectively conflated the two in overwhelming numbers of cases. When synagogues are vandalized in the name of anti-Zionism that reality can only be denied by those who share the vandals’ cause. All too often “Zionist” is really just a euphemism for “Jew” and those who deny that are enablers of antisemitism. If not actual antisemites themselves.
I’m not sure how closely Rana Jaleel read my recent post on the AAUP’s Title VI statement, but I appreciate her responding in her role as chair of Committee A. I agree with her that the statement has many virtues, from its summaries of recent court decisions to its explication of Trump’s weaponization of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. Unfortunately, the AAUP statement self-destructs with the use of a single adverb.
Jaleel attests that both the members of Committee A and the drafters of the statement have a nuanced understanding of discrimination. I’m sure they do. The problem is that the statement itself does not. Committee A, the courts, Kenneth Stern, and Rashidi Khalidi are all free to disagree with me that “antizionism is now the classic coded language of antisemites,” or about how often, and in what circumstances, antisemitism and antizionism may overlap. But when the AAUP cavalierly dismisses the practical daily perceptions of a great many Jews as “”absurd”—as Committee A has done in this statement by relying on the Khalidi quote for authoritative substantiation—there’s no coming back, at least not to readers who don’t already agree with them. Such a rhetorical tactic closes the conversation. The statement loses all credibility. That’s what I mean when I say that, to a lot of people who might otherwise be inclined to support AAUP ideals, the AAUP has no idea what it’s talking about.
From Jaleel’s response, I don’t doubt that Committee A honestly sees itself acting as the “stewards of knowledge” and holding fast to the “core principles” of academic freedom by not indulging in a “chess match” with public perception. That’s wonderful. But you disregard the audience at your peril. Rather than dismiss my post as ignorant, playing into Trump’s hands, an alternative response might have been to consider revising the report by substituting a less self-destructive quote, possibly from Khalid.
Every AAUP statement needs to be, on at least an indirect, tertiary level, a defense of the twin AAUP staples—tenure, and faculty control of the educational product. For anyone at all inclined to question whether tenure has any value to anyone beside the professor with tenure, or if faculty control of the educational product is viable in a discipline dominated by ideologues, the AAUP Title VI statement will intensify their doubts. I’m pretty sure I’m not the one playing into Trump’s hands.
To any readers left: I encourage you to read the report and see for yourself if you believe that one adverb—used by Khalidi to describe the effects of Columbia’s interpretation of the IHRA on *the teaching of history*—can bear the interpretative weight of Eron’s exegesis. I encourage you to read how the report treats problems of *actionable discrimination* under Title VI, especially antisemitism, and judge for yourself how that larger context informs any discussion of the quotation at issue. Consider too, the weight given to an asserted public on whose behalf Eron is comfortable in making a number of claims. Consider who “counts” for Eron as the public, the audience, that matters—and who does not.
That said, I’m glad that Eron now agrees that Committee A’s Title VI report could—but for one word!—have some value. By my count, there are approximately 7,911 other words in the report.
Don Eron is clearly wrong to put so much emphasis on the adverb “absurdly.” when the problem is far greater, namely the fundamental disparagement of the IHRA itself by those who wish to deny that “anti-Zionism” often amounts to antisemistism in the very ways the IHRA identifies. If that isn’t Professor Jaleel’s intent, then she is free to say so clearly and unequivocally.