Academic Freedom and IHRA’s Working Definition of Antisemitism

In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adopted a so-called ‘legally non-binding working definition of antisemitism’ (IHRA WDA 2016) under pressure from Israel and the USA.

Numerous experts have concluded that the definition poses a threat to both academic freedom and freedom of expression. Yet none of this has prevented 43 countries, including 26 EU States, the UK, Canada, Israel, the USA and Australia, from adopting it and using it as ‘soft law’ also applied at universities. 

In Germany, academics like Holberg Laureate Achille Mbembe, ProfessorGhassan Hage and Professor Eyal Weizman have had engagementscancelled with reference to IHRA WDA 2016. In the USA, the IHRA WDA 2016 features prominently in the Trump administration’s assault on US universities and pro-Palestinian activists in the name of ‘combatting antisemitism.’

In this lecture, Sindre Bangstad will explore the implications of the IHRA WDA 2016 for academic freedom, particularly for academics in Middle Eastern Studies. He argues that Norway should not adopt the IHRA WDA 2016, considering the severe consequences faced by academics in countries where this definition has been enforced under state pressure.

Sindre Bangstad is a Norwegian social anthropologist, and Research Professor at KIFO in Oslo. He specialises in the anthropology of Islam, but has also published extensively on racism, hate speech and Islamophobia. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Teaching of Anthropology at Princeton University (2022-3). He has published more than ten monographs and edited volumes.

The guest lecture will be chaired by Pelle Valentin Olsen, Associate Professor at AHKR, UiB. He is a cultural, social, and transnational historian of the modern Middle East. His research and teaching focus on the history of leisure, labor, gender, sexuality, popular culture, and cultural production.