Kenneth Stern helped write a definition now endorsed by more than forty countries. Why does he believe it’s causing harm?
Illustration by Edmon de Haro
In November, 2017, Kenneth Stern appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about a bill under consideration, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act. Approved by the Senate a year earlier, the bill would require the Department of Education to apply a specific definition of antisemitism when investigating alleged cases of discrimination against Jews on college campuses. Stern, a lawyer and scholar who served for twenty-five years as the American Jewish Committee’s in-house expert on antisemitism, had devoted much of his career to highlighting the hatred and intolerance that threatens Jews. He was also the lead drafter of the definition cited by the bill, a definition that he had once urged both State Department officials and foreign policymakers to embrace.
