UK Parliamentary Report Exposes Antisemitism On Campus, Urges Using IHRA

(JNS) A comprehensive report, which the British Parliament task force on antisemitism in higher education released last month, provides extensive personal testimonies of Jewish students and staff at universities across the United Kingdom.

The 44-page report draws upon a year of research, including interviews at 50 colleges and universities. It recommends that higher education institutions embrace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism in order to foster trust with Jewish students and faculty and staff members.

There is also a need for higher educational institutions to better accommodate reasonable adjustments for religious students, faculty and staff, and to review their procedures through which complaints are reviewed, per the report.

“The majority of Jewish students and staff have a positive time at university, encountering or witnessing very little antisemitism,” per the report. “However, when antisemitism does occur, the impact each incident has on the small community of Jewish students and staff should not be underestimated.”

The report also noted that antisemitism often goes unreported, as in what it calls “microaggressions” that “demonstrate how prejudice is normalized without anyone recognising its impact.” Among the examples the report cites are friends telling one Jewish student to settle a bill “because they could afford it,” and another Jewish student being told at a party, “You’re too pretty to be Jewish.” A postgraduate researcher reported a colleague refused to collaborate, or even to respond to communications, upon learning of the researcher’s Israeli roots.

“Education about antisemitism should be embedded within wider equality, diversity and inclusion training structures and all anti-racism training, at all levels of the university,” the report recommended.