Experts told JNS that University of Pittsburgh has shown that it isn’t serious about combatting Jew-hatred after the public school’s working group on antisemitism released a report and the university said that it won’t adopt a definition of Jew-hatred.
“How can anyone expect the university administration to take seriously incidents of antisemitism when administrators won’t even define what constitutes antisemitism?” Brandy Shufutinsky, director of the education and national security program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS.
Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that “without a definition that reaches anti-Zionist harassment and an accountability body the university does not control, the rest is process without teeth.”
“This is the posture of an administration claiming to fight Jew-hatred without implementing the architecture to end it,” he said. (JNS sought comment from Pitt.)
The university created the working group in March 2025 after “multiple reports of antisemitic activity” on the public campus after Oct. 7. The group advised the school to create a portal for reporting misconduct, clarify that its policies on Jew-hatred extend to electronic communications and state clearly that time, place and manner can restrict certain speech on campus.
The working group also told the university to form an independent unit to address Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and require students, faculty and staff to undergo Jew-hatred training. The report stated that “antisemitism may be expressed as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist bias.”
The chancellor’s office stated on Monday that the group’s recommendations are “thoughtful and actionable” but that Pitt “did not charge the working group with creating a formal institutional definition, and the university is not adopting a single definition in this response or elsewhere.”
“This position reflects the university’s recognition that Jewish experience, identity and scholarship are diverse and that no single definition fully captures and relates to the range of lived experiences, concerns and perspectives within and regarding the Jewish community,” it said.
Filitti told JNS that Pitt “agreed with the sentiment but refused the substance” of the report.
The university’s response “never once uses the words ‘Israel’ or ‘Zionism’ in its training section, instead announcing it will adopt no definition of antisemitism at all,” he said.
Shufutinsky told JNS that Pitt’s statement on the report “excuses the refusal to define antisemitism.”
The eight-page report also recommends that Pitt form an “advisory council that includes Hillel, Chabad, the Jewish Federation and other appropriate Jewish institutions and groups.” The university responded by saying that it “appreciates the recommendation for an external advisory council and will work with stakeholders to determine the appropriate structure and what format would be most effective and appropriate for the university.”
Filitti told JNS that “the report did not ask the university to ‘consider’ an advisory council. It named the members and set the meeting cadence.”
“That became a promise to ‘work with stakeholders to determine the appropriate structure,’ reserving to the university the power to shape the body into something it controls,” he said.
Raeefa Shams, communications and programming director at Academic Engagement Network, told JNS that AEN is “pleased” with Pitt’s response, especially clarifying time, place and manner restrictions, increasing academic resources and classes on contemporary Jew-hatred and implementing antisemitism training that “addresses anti-Zionism and anti-Israel bias.”
“While we have often recommended the IHRA definition of antisemitism as an important tool in understanding and addressing the issue, we do appreciate that the report clearly states that ‘antisemitism may be expressed as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist bias,’” she said,
