Anti-Semitism – Universities threatened with funding cuts

The Times of Israel 17 October 2020

The United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson accused British universities of “dragging their feet” in responding to anti-Semitism on campus and urged them to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition or risk losing government funding, reports The Times of Israel.

In a letter to British universities, Williamson accused institutions of higher education of “a lack of willingness” to confront anti-Jewish sentiments on campus. “It is frankly disturbing that so many are dragging their feet on the matter of anti-Semitism. The repugnant belief that anti-Semitism is somehow a less serious, or more acceptable, form of racism has taken insidious hold in some parts of British society,” the letter read. Williamson urged universities to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, noting that the number of institutions that have already done so remained “shamefully low”.

According to a freedom of information request by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) in the UK, just 29 of the 133 schools of higher education have adopted the definition, and 80 institutions said they did not intend to do so, according to the UJS. Critics of the definition argue that it stifles criticism of Israel. The definition includes a clause defining anti-Semitism as “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
Full report on The Times of Israel site

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