The U.S. Department of Education warned 60 U.S. colleges and universities last week that they may face punishment for not stopping alleged campus antisemitism. The government’s allegations are controversial in part because they depend on how antisemitism is defined. Does allowing protests that criticize the state of Israel constitute antisemitism?
A few days earlier, the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University. The administration claims that anti-Israel protests harmed Jewish students amid the Gaza war protests that roiled the school in 2024. The American Association of University Professors has opposed the move, arguing that criticizing Israel’s human rights record is constitutionally protected speech.
How valid are the Trump administration’s claims of antisemitism? Findings from a recent survey show that defining antisemitism in different ways has significant implications for how we understand its prevalence in the public. Different definitions also change who expresses antisemitic views, and how those views are related to social prejudice against Jews.
Diverging definitions of antisemitism
I draw on definitions of antisemitism from two different sources – the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA).
Both definitions agree that classic false tropes about Jews – for instance, that the Holocaust is exaggerated or that Jews control the media – constitute antisemitism. But the definitions diverge in how they characterize criticism of Israel.
The IHRA adopted a “Working Definition of Antisemitism” in 2016 that was originally drafted in 2005. According to this document, “manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” Nonetheless, IHRA antisemitism examples include “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” without caveats about similar criticisms for other countries.
The 2021 JDA, on the other hand, argued some IHRA Israel/Zionism-related examples were not antisemitic. Examples include anti-Israel boycotts, advocating a binational non-Jewish state, comparisons to past oppressive regimes, and criticizing systemic racism.
The U.S. Congress endorsed the IHRA definition in 2024 over objections from Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a Jewish member of Congress who argued it “threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech. Speech that is critical of Israel – alone – does not constitute unlawful discrimination.” Voicing a similar concern in 2019, the lead author of the IHRA text, Kenneth Stern, wrote that right-wing Jewish groups were using IHRA to silence legitimate criticism of Israel.
How might we measure antisemitism?
In October 2024, I conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, fielded by the firm YouGov. The survey’s goal was to test how diverging definitions of antisemitism shape how we understand today’s battles in the long war between antisemites and pluralists in America. The analysis that follows excludes the 2% of respondents who identified as Jewish.
To measure the consensus view of antisemitism, I presented respondents with two statements and asked (on a 5-point scale) how much they agreed with each:
· “The number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated.”
· “The idea that Jewish Americans secretly control much of American society is a dangerous myth.”
Agreeing with the first statement would indicate higher levels of antisemitism. Disagreeing with the second statement (which asks whether an antisemitic trope is false) would also indicate higher levels of antisemitism.
The survey found that 9% of U.S. adults somewhat/strongly agreed that the Holocaust was exaggerated, while another 24% chose the “neither agree nor disagree” response. And 12% somewhat/strongly disagreed with the truth that “Jews control the media” is a myth. Another 31% who chose the non-committal response.
There were small differences by partisanship. Democrats were slightly more likely to say the Holocaust was exaggerated than Republicans (12% vs. 7%). Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to accept the Jewish media trope (11% and 12%, respectively), although significantly more Democrats strongly agreed that Jewish control of the media is a lie. Respondents who identified as independents were a few points more likely to embrace the antisemitic sentiments than were partisans.
Measuring IHRA examples
The story is different, however, when we examine attitudes about the state of Israel. To measure the IHRA examples about criticism of Israel, I presented respondents with two statements, again asking (on a 5-point scale) how much they agreed with each:
· “Creating Israel out of Palestine was racist against Palestinians.”
· “Comparing Israel’s actions against Palestinians with how Nazis treated Jews is never OK.”
According to the IHRA examples, agreeing with the first statement could constitute antisemitism. And disagreeing with the second statement would do the same.
Compared to the results from the Jewish tropes questions, endorsement of these statements is higher: 20% of Americans somewhat/strongly agreed that Israel’s establishment in Palestine was racist. And 17% of Americans somewhat/strongly disagreed that Israeli policies should never be compared to Nazism.
The survey also found differences by party on this set of questions: 33% of Democrats but only 9% of Republicans agreed that Israel’s creation was racist. And 24% of Democrats think it may be fair to compare some Israeli actions to Nazi actions, versus 11% of Republicans.
Notably, the correlation between responses to the Jewish tropes and the Israel sets of questions is quite low – about 0.25. That means they are only weakly related. In short, knowing how someone feels about Israel doesn’t reveal much on how they feel about Jews.
These findings suggest that antisemitic tropes and criticisms of Israel represent two very different viewpoints in America.
What does this say about social discrimination?
A key question, then, is to what extent each set of attitudes translates into social prejudice – that is, viewing or treating Jews in a discriminatory way?
One way public opinion scholars study prejudice is to ask how someone would feel if a close family member married someone from a different identity group. I took a similar approach in this survey.
In this study, I randomly assigned respondents how they would feel if the spouse-in-law was 1) Jewish, 2) Jewish and strongly supported Israel, or 3) Jewish and strongly criticized Israel. Responses ranged on a scale from “very happy” to “very unhappy,” which I then converted to a 100-point scale. I again analyzed only respondents who did not identify as Jewish.
Respondents rated their happiness as a 60, on average, for the basic “Jewish” in-law hypothetical. When the person marrying into the family was a “Jewish Israel supporter,” the average was 57. For a “Jewish Israel critic,” it was 48.
The key findings here
These results suggest that people who endorse classic antisemitic tropes always report less happiness with the marriage to a Jewish person, regardless of Israel views. In contrast, people who endorse IHRA examples respond almost wholly to the prospective in-law’s views on Israel – and not their Jewish identity.
People who fully endorsed antisemitic tropes averaged 27 points less happiness about a family member marrying a Jewish person, with no reference to political views, versus 9 points less happy for those fully endorsing the IHRA examples. (The latter finding may involve presumptions about the Jewish person’s Israel views, which are antisemitic if they assume the “dual loyalty” trope.)
And compared to the baseline with no stated Israel views, people who fully endorsed the IHRA examples were 33 points more negative toward the Jewish Israel supporter – but 36 points more positive toward the Jewish Israel critic.
These findings are important to the current debate
How we define antisemitism matters greatly for protecting Jewish Americans from harm. And this definition also figures into protecting the right to criticize Israel’s actions. These are the exact questions that have produced upheaval on U.S. college campuses, which the Trump administration is using to justify defunding universities and colleges over student-led protests.
Public opinion data reported here show that differing definitions produce dramatically different views of who Americans label as antisemitic. The big takeaway? Disdain for Jewish people, as Jews, is empirically distinct from criticism of Israel.
Nathan Kalmoe is executive administrative director for the Center for Communication & Civic Renewal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan in 2012. Kalmoe is the author of three scholarly books – Neither Liberal nor Conservative, With Ballots & Bullets, and Radical American Partisanship – and two dozen academic articles on U.S. public opinion, including prejudice and inequality by race, gender, class, and religion. He thanks Thomas Zeitzoff for helpful feedback on question wording and thanks the Center for Communication & Civic Renewal for space on the 2024 Wisconsin Communication & Election Survey.
