Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Brooklyn College adopts universal definition of anti-Semitism

As many as 4,000 undergraduates are Jewish—some 27 percent of the student body.

Boylan Hall at Brooklyn College, one of 11 senior colleges in the CUNY system. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Boylan Hall at Brooklyn College, one of 11 senior colleges in the CUNY system. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The student senate at Brooklyn College in New York adopted the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism on Tuesday.

The IHRA definition says: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Of the 14,970 undergraduates at Brooklyn College, as many as 4,000 of them are Jewish, or 27 percent of the student body, while out of the school’s 2,841 graduates, some 500, or 18 percent, are Jewish, according to Hillel International.

The Berkeley project “has a record of promoting anti-Israel and antisemitic agendas,” Oleg Ivanov, of StandWithUs, told JNS. “We are deeply concerned that the same thing will happen in this training.”
The announcement comes as Israeli banks are expected to end correspondent banking services to Palestinian counterparts.
“My jaw kind of hit the floor for a second,” an attendee of the event told JNS.
The Federation told JNS exclusively that it is ending its engagement with a consultant who headed one of its communications projects after JNS reported that he advised attendees at a Federations conference to avoid using the word “Zionism.”