AEN Research Paper Series
                                Research Paper No. 7

    Introduction.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 4

    I.	 Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism?.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 6
         A. Antisemitism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
            1. Historical Origins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
            2. Modern Reframing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
            3. Scholarly Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
         B. Zionism (and Anti-Zionism). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
            1. Historical Origins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
            2. Modern Reframing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
            3. Scholarly Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
         C. Legal Consequences of Defining Anti-Zionism as Antisemitism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
            1. Title VI, Free Speech, and Hate Crimes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
            2. Beyond Labels: Functional Analysis of Anti-Zionist Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
            3. From Theory to Real-World Implications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

    II.	 Experiencing Israel After October 7.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 14
         A. Arrival and First Impressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
         B. Memory and the Marketplace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
         C. Bearing Witness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
            1. Tekuma Car Graveyard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
            2. Kibbutz Nir Oz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
            3. Nova Festival Testimony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
            4. IDF BBQ and Reflections from Soldiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
         D. The Pain Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
            1. Hamas Raw Footage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
            2. Hostages and Missing Families Forum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
            3. International Law Briefing at S. Horowitz & Co.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
         E. Reflections from a Rooftop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

    III.	Institutional Clarity in the Face of Ideological Violence.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 31
         A. The Limits of Abstraction in Legal and Institutional Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
         B. Virtue Ethics as the Ethos of Liberal Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
         C. Institutional Integrity and the Classical Liberal Mandate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
         D. A Liberal-Realist Framework for Institutional Reform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

    Conclusion.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 38

    Endnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Introduction
On October 7, 2023, the Foreign Terrorist Organization known as Hamas led an
unprecedented attack on Israel: Hamas murdered more than 1,200 civilians,2 kidnapped
over 250 Israelis,3 and live-streamed crimes against humanity,4 including shooting babies
with assault rifles and killing children via hand grenades.5 While the charred remains of
civilians still smoldered in the melted husks of passenger sedans that Hamas firebombed
along Israel’s Route 282, anti-Israel demonstrations erupted worldwide, including on
American campuses.6 University administrators, caught between preserving free speech
and curtailing hate—and sometimes intimidated by threats of violence—struggled to
identify when criticism of Israeli policy bled into antisemitic incitement.7

This struggle gets to the heart of the debate on whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Is
anti-Zionism antisemitism? This debate can feel distant and theoretical in lecture halls
and academic papers. But it was a visceral, real-world experience for everyone who
engaged with campus life for much of the 2023–2024 academic year. Anti-Israel protests
correlated with antisemitic incidents, which rose over 800% that year: from October
7, 2023, to January 7, 2024, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 3,291 anti-Jewish
incidents, including 56 physical assaults.8, 9

Many Jewish students, faculty, and staff experienced this parallel surge in anti-Jewish
hostility—at times including overt threats—and many felt abandoned by colleagues
and institutional leaders who failed to speak out. Meanwhile, some Jewish students and
Jewish-identified organizations joined pro-Palestinian encampments and even hosted

    The incidents themselves were difficult to categorize. Vandals defaced a historic Jewish deli
    in Los Angeles with anti-Israel slogans.12 Pro-Palestinian protestors pepper-sprayed and
    physically assaulted a yarmulke-wearing man in Times Square while shouting antisemitic
    slurs.13 The complexity of these incidents, however, revealed that it is no longer sufficient
    to treat this conflict as a binary or merely geopolitical matter. Scholars have begun to
    document how these dynamics impact identity formation and public discourse.14

    Against this backdrop, I joined a dozen law professors on a Mission to Israel in July 2024.
    The decision was not easy. My daughter had just been born three months earlier, and my
    wife was understandably afraid of what I might see—or not come back from seeing. As I
    prepared to leave, my grandmother passed away. I livestreamed her funeral service from
    Boston Logan Airport, believing this mission would honor her legacy and strengthen our
    collective response to a crisis of moral clarity.

    During our four-day visit, we stood amid the ashen remains
    of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where Hamas murdered 46 residents and                      This paper
    kidnapped 71 hostages—including nine-month-old baby Kfir                 contends that
    Bibas.15 We spoke with frontline Israeli soldiers returning from     lived experience—
    active duty in Gaza just hours earlier.16 We heard from Arab
    and Jewish Israeli civilians who rejected the false dichotomy
                                                                        direct observation,
    of “Jew vs. Palestinian” and described Hamas as everyone’s                 not detached
    enemy. We met grieving families, legal experts, professors,               abstraction—
    and politicians. We received detailed briefings on the laws
                                                                              is essential to
    of war from IDF legal counsel, debated proportionality
    standards with Israeli attorneys, and studied international law         understanding
    through International Criminal Court (ICC) and International         when anti-Zionist
    Court of Justice (ICJ) proceedings.17 We explored the role of       speech crosses into
    non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such Human Rights
    Watch and Amnesty Internation. We bore witness to war
                                                                       antisemitic conduct.
    crimes.18

    These encounters forced me to confront moral, legal, and emotional dimensions that
    are easy to overlook from the safety of a university office. I saw how students, faculty,
    and administrators in Israel grappled with balancing free expression and academic
    freedom against the need to protect human life and condemn incitement. I also saw how
    euphemisms, slogans, and abstract theorizing often obscure lived reality.

    This paper contends that lived experience—direct observation, not detached abstraction—is
    essential to understanding when anti-Zionist speech crosses into antisemitic conduct. When
    protest slogans glorify murder, when student groups endorse terrorist attacks, or when
    Jewish students are vilified for their identity, these actions cannot be dismissed as mere
    “critique.”19 Conversely, some critiques of Israeli governance are valid political expressions
    that deserve protection on campus, even when they are uncomfortable or disturbing.

Antisemitic incidents are rising sharply worldwide, spanning digital spaces and campus
quads alike.23 To navigate this terrain with integrity, university leaders need not only
principled definitions and legal clarity—they need the moral courage to witness firsthand
what is happening, and to speak honestly about what they see.



I. Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism?
This question of whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism has become a legal, political,
and institutional flashpoint. On college campuses and in public debate, terms like
“antisemitism” and “anti-Zionism” are invoked with increasing frequency—and decreasing
clarity. Some treat anti-Zionism as protected political dissent. Others view it as a
contemporary form of Jew-hatred, inseparable from antisemitism in effect if not intent.
Definitions abound. But agreement remains elusive.

This Part examines those definitional debates and the consequences that follow from them.
It proceeds in three stages. Section A surveys widely used definitions of antisemitism.
Section B turns to anti-Zionism, exploring its historical meanings, ideological variants, and
how it functions rhetorically and politically in campus settings. Section C analyzes why
these distinctions matter in law—particularly under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act—and how
definitional ambiguity can serve as a shield for institutional evasion. The pivotal concerns
are that a narrow definition is unresponsive when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism, while
a broad definition can chill protected speech and legitimate political criticism.

The goal is not to resolve every theoretical dispute, but to illuminate what is at stake
when universities treat antisemitism and anti-Zionism as separate, interchangeable, or
undefined. Definitions are not merely academic exercises. They shape which harms are
recognized, which claims are believed, and whether institutional action is seen as justified
or overreaching. Part II will illustrate, and Part III will argue, that abstraction is no longer
enough. But, before we can transcend the war of words, we should understand it.


A . A NTI SEMI TI SM
To engage meaningfully in the debate over whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, we must
first clarify what “antisemitism” itself means. The term may appear straightforward, but it
carries dense historical, ideological, and political baggage. Understanding antisemitism
requires examining its troubling origins, its modern reframing in public discourse, and the
scholarly debate about how best to define it—particularly in legal and academic settings.

    By the mid-19th century, Semitic had evolved into a term of racial and moral judgment.
    French philosopher Ernest Renan claimed in 1855 that “Semitic” peoples were intellectually
    and morally inferior to “Aryan” peoples, a view that helped racialize Jews in European
    thought.27 The term “antisemitism” took definitive form in 1879 when German journalist
    Wilhelm Marr founded the League of Antisemites (Antisemiten-Liga) and published The
    Victory of Judaism over Germanism, which used the term to frame Jews as a biologically
    alien race threatening German national survival.28 Marr’s antisemitism cloaked old hatred in
    the language of racial anthropology and social Darwinism, portraying Jews not merely as a
    religious group but as an existential biological threat.29

    Today, some efforts seek to reclaim moral clarity by discarding the term “antisemitism”
    altogether. Businessman Robert Kraft, for example, launched a national campaign
    encouraging Americans to say “Jew hatred” instead.30 This shift aims to pierce the
    abstraction that antisemitism has become and refocus attention on the hatred it masks.31
    Nonetheless, in law and academia, “antisemitism” remains the operative term, and its
    definition remains highly contested.

    2. Modern Reframing
    In contemporary discourse, antisemitism remains both politicized and misunderstood.
    Public controversies have erupted over campus speech, political criticism of Israel, and
    international policy. Central to many of these debates is the definition promulgated
    by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a standard adopted by
    numerous governments and institutions, making it useful for legal analysis. IHRA defines
    “antisemitism” as:

            “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.
            Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or
            non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions
            and religious facilities.”32

    The IHRA further explains that “manifestations might include the targeting of the State of
    Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity,” but notes that “criticism of Israel similar to that
    leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”33

    The definition attempts to preserve space for criticism of Israeli policy while identifying
    when anti-Zionist rhetoric crosses into antisemitism. However, its application has sparked
    widespread debate.

By contrast, Kenneth Stern, who coordinated the drafting of the IHRA definition but was not
involved in the final revisions,37 has warned against its codification into law. He argues that
it was meant as an educational tool, not a legal instrument, and that its misapplication risks
suppressing legitimate political debate, especially in academic settings.38 Other scholars
share this concern. Raeefa Z. Shams, writing for the Academic Engagement Network,
warns that if definitions are applied too broadly, they may marginalize dissenting voices or
delegitimize Palestinian perspectives—while nonetheless acknowledging that virulent forms
of anti-Zionism frequently invoke antisemitic tropes.39

The Anti-Defamation League has likewise tried to strike a careful balance that distinguishes
between criticism of Israeli government actions (not inherently antisemitic) and efforts to
deny Israel’s right to exist (which it classifies as antisemitic).40 At some point, however, the
concepts collapse, as sociologist David Hirsh asserts, “A pervasive anti‑Zionist worldview,
when it becomes the norm, can pave the way for overt antisemitism.”41 Hirsh’s statement
underscores the risk that political critique may eventually slide into hate speech against
Jews and counsels for more expansive prohibitions against anti-Israel speech. Where that
sliding occurs, however, become the nexus of that debate. Some scholars, such as Andrew
Pessin, note that while any coarse answer is sometimes wrong, anti-Zionism on campus is
usually a manifestation of antisemitism.42 On the other end of the spectrum, L. J. Jaffee
decidedly proffers the coarse assertion that “Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.”43 The
middle ground answer seems to be, “it’s complicated.”44

A broader scholarly consensus suggests that the distinction hinges less on doctrinal purity
than on pragmatic function. Dov Waxman, David Schraub, and Adam Hosein argue that
the definitional problem lies in part with the expectations we place on any single definition:
that it should serve legal, social, academic, and moral purposes all at once.45 Alternative
frameworks, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and the Nexus Document,
have been proposed in response to these concerns, though none has gained IHRA’s
widespread adoption.

Despite ongoing disputes, one reality is clear: the way we define antisemitism has direct
implications for legal rights, institutional responsibilities, and moral clarity. While the IHRA
definition is not binding federal law, agencies like the Department of Education apply
it when assessing discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. As such, even an
unsettled definition has settled legal consequences—a point to which we return in Part C.

    After World War I, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire enabled British and French control
    of the region. The League of Nations created the British Mandate of Palestine on July 24,
    1922, effectively endorsing the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported a Jewish
    national home while preserving the rights of non-Jewish communities.48 Tensions mounted
    as Jewish immigration increased and Zionism grew from a spiritual aspiration into a political
    program. Arab nationalists rejected Jewish sovereignty altogether, while practical Zionists
    sought to build facts on the ground. Meanwhile, many Jewish communities—particularly
    ultra-Orthodox Jews—opposed the Zionist project altogether.49

    The Holocaust drastically transformed the debate. In its aftermath, the moral urgency for
    a Jewish homeland became undeniable to many observers, and international sympathy
    aligned—briefly—with Zionist aims.50 In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition British
    Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leaders accepted the plan; Arab
    leaders rejected it. When David Ben-Gurion declared independence on May 14, 1948, five
    Arab states launched a coordinated military attack. Zionist forces prevailed, but the war
    displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians—a trauma memorialized in Arab political culture
    as the Nakba (“catastrophe”).51

    From the Zionist perspective, this was the War of Independence. From the Palestinian
    perspective, it was the dispossession of a people. These rival narratives remain

 2. Modern Reframing
 These historical flashpoints have shaped the way Zionism is understood today, particularly
 in campus and legal discourse. Supporters of Israel often see Zionism as a movement of
 liberation, self-determination, and cultural renewal. Critics of Israel tend to depict Zionism
 as a form of settler colonialism or racial supremacy. In this polarized environment, the word
 itself has become a proxy for deeper conflicts.

 For many Jews, Zionism is inseparable from identity and safety. Zionism promises Jewish
 sovereignty in a world that has repeatedly proven unsafe for stateless Jews.52 The Jewish
 state—like any state—has flaws. But to deny its right to exist is not merely a critique of
 policy. It undermines the legitimacy of Jewish peoplehood, especially when the same critics
 affirm the national claims of other peoples, including Palestinians.53

 Anti-Zionism today often travels under the flag of anti-colonialism or human rights. But
 scholars have shown that this rhetoric frequently cloaks eliminationist goals. Gil Troy argues
 that anti-Zionism is not a dispassionate critique of state conduct; it is a political mutation
 of antisemitism that retains its essential animus but adapts to modern norms.54 Einat Wilf
 likewise contends that societies in ideological crisis frequently project their tensions onto
 Jews, and today, onto Zionists.55 Anti-Zionism becomes the acceptable form of antisemitism
 in circles that would never admit hatred of Jews directly.

 Troy and Wilf are not alone. The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, distinguishes
 between criticism of Israeli policy and categorical rejection of Jewish sovereignty, labeling
 the latter as antisemitic.56 Dina Porat, Yad Vashem’s chief historian, documents how anti-
 Zionist slogans have long served as cover for antisemitic ideologies.57 These scholars
 recognize that anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitism—but that the two often
 converge, especially when Zionism is denied as a right granted to all other peoples.

 3. Scholarly Debate
 Some scholars urge restraint. David Feldman argues that anti-Zionism and antisemitism,
 while sometimes overlapping, are analytically distinct and must not be conflated.58 Kenneth
 Stern, who was involved in the IHRA drafting but not its final product, has criticized efforts
 to codify that definition into law or campus policy. He fears it could chill legitimate political
 speech and suppress dissenting views on Israeli conduct.59 Stern argues the IHRA definition
 was meant as a research tool, not a legal weapon. But others reject Stern’s interpretive
 authority. Cary Nelson, who has written extensively on academic freedom and antisemitism,
 argues that Stern’s dissent has been misused to discredit IHRA, and that adopting it as a
 nonbinding framework enhances rather than restricts university discourse.60

 Raeefa Z. Shams, writing for the Academic Engagement Network, critiques overly expansive
 definitions that equate all anti-Zionism with antisemitism. She worries that this conflation
 erodes academic freedom. Yet even she acknowledges that much anti-Zionist rhetoric
 on campus draws from antisemitic tropes and fuels hostile climates for Jewish students.61

    The IHRA’s working definition is widely cited in legal and policy contexts. It defines
    antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward
    Jews,” and it includes examples involving Israel that “might” be antisemitic—such as
    applying double standards or denying Jewish self-determination.63 Critics claim the
    definition is too vague or too easily misused. But defenders see it as a flexible, context-
    sensitive tool. Its use by the U.S. State Department, the European Commission, and dozens
    of universities attests to its significance in contemporary legal and institutional discourse.64

    The stakes of this definitional debate are real. If Zionism is merely another political ideology,
    then anti-Zionism might be protected dissent. But if Zionism is the collective expression of
    Jewish self-determination, then denying it while affirming that right for all other groups looks
    much more like discrimination. Whether or not anti-Zionism is always antisemitism, the law
    must remain alert to how it functions in practice. That is the challenge Part C now takes up.


    C . L E G A L CONSEQ U ENCES O F DEFIN ING ANT I-ZIO N IS M AS
    A N TIS EMI TI SM
    We are caught in a war of words that obscures the reality of war. On October 7, 2023,
    terrorists murdered more than 1,200 people. In particular, the Palestinian terrorist
    organization known as Hamas,65 who led “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,”66 made no secret of
    their motive: hatred of Jews, which is in their founding charter.67 There is no reasonable
    debate on this point, which one can read firsthand; the United Nations identifies how
    Hamas encoded Jew hatred as its founding principle.68

    Yet instead of confronting this atrocity, many universities and institutions became quickly
    entangled in abstractions wrapped in slogans. The phrase “from the river to the sea”
    echoed across campuses as if it were a benign call for freedom, rather than a genocidal
    erasure of Jewish life from the Land of Israel. The Law Professors’ Mission to Israel cut
    through this veneer of moralizing. Its participants bore witness to burned-out homes, bullet-
    riddled baby cribs, and civilians gunned down while hiding in kibbutz bomb shelters. This
    was not a metaphorical war. It was a massacre.

    The abstract debate over definitions—Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?—is overly cerebral.
    This is unfortunate because the stakes are anything but academic. The practical impact of
    this discussion does not come from arguing over semantics; we are confronting real-world
    threats to safety, dignity, and legal protection. The central question is not whether a perfect
    definition of antisemitism exists, but whether institutions are willing to recognize when calls
    to “resist Zionism” devolve into targeted hostility against Jews. The cerebral approach gets
    it wrong, no matter how it comes out, because this is not primarily a cerebral matter—unless
    you are referring to the literal gray matter of innocents that Hamas terrorists splattered
    onto the dashboards of passenger sedans and melted into the immolated steel remains of
    firebombed ambulances.

 1. Title VI, Free Speech, and Hate Crimes
 In U.S. universities, antisemitic speech may constitute a hostile environment under Title VI
 of the Civil Rights Act, even where such speech is protected under the First Amendment.69
 Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs
 receiving federal funding. While it does not explicitly protect religion, courts and agencies
 have recognized that Jews may be covered under Title VI when they face discrimination
 based on ethnic or ancestral identity.70 Title VI enforcement became increasingly prominent
 as universities struggled to address rising antisemitic incidents linked to anti-Israel activism,
 particularly surrounding the BDS movement.71

 The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has repeatedly clarified
 this point, most recently in its 2024 Dear Colleague letter, which affirms that anti-
 Zionist expressions may be investigated under Title VI when they target Jews or Israel in
 discriminatory ways.72 These standards incorporate the IHRA definition, which describes
 antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward
 Jews” and includes as examples the denial of Israel’s right to exist or applying double
 standards not demanded of any other democratic nation.73

 At the same time, public universities must safeguard freedom of speech. Under the First
 Amendment, even deeply offensive speech remains protected unless it rises to the level of
 direct threats, harassment, or incitement to imminent lawless action.74 This legal balancing
 act—protecting both free expression and equal protection—places administrators in a
 difficult position. State hate-crime statutes may criminalize acts motivated by anti-Jewish
 bias, but universities must also avoid censoring political speech merely because it is
 unpopular.

 When slogans like “Zionists don’t belong on this campus” appear in student protests,
 administrators must ask: Is this protected political speech? Or is it a campaign of identity-
 based exclusion? The answer is not always clear. But what is clear is that legal consequences
 flow from how we define and understand anti-Zionist expression.

 2. Beyond Labels: Functional Analysis of Anti-Zionist Speech
 The scholarly consensus is fractured—but many scholars urge a functional analysis rather
 than a formalistic one. Gil Troy argues that modern anti-Zionism is not a distinct ideology
 but a “mutation” of traditional antisemitism, preserving the logic of exclusion while
 updating its vocabulary.75 Einat Wilf agrees, characterizing anti-Zionism as a societal
 projection that recurs during periods of ideological breakdown. She contends that hatred
 of Israel now serves the same psychological function as classic antisemitism once did: it
 provides a convenient scapegoat for complex global frustrations.76

 This analysis matters legally. The same rhetoric that appears as “criticism of Israel” in the
 abstract may, in context, amount to discriminatory conduct. If a protestor denounces Israel’s

    Kenneth L. Marcus, a former head of OCR, warns that labeling all anti-Zionism as
    antisemitism can suppress debate—but ignoring its discriminatory impact allows hostile
    environments to flourish.77 British sociologist David Hirsh similarly argues that pervasive anti-
    Zionist worldviews often normalize antisemitism, especially when cloaked in the rhetoric of
    anti-racism or human rights.78 Scholars on the other side, such as Kenneth Stern and David
    Feldman, urge caution against expansive definitions that may chill academic freedom. But
    even they acknowledge the danger of anti-Zionism functioning as a vehicle for traditional
    antisemitic ideas.79

    The takeaway is clear: the label is less important than
    the effect. What does the speech actually do? Does
    it single out Jews for hostility, exclusion, or violence?               The takeaway is
    Does it invoke antisemitic tropes, such as global                  clear: the label is less
    conspiracies or blood libels, under the guise of anti-               important than the
    Zionism? If so, institutions may—and must—respond.
                                                                       effect. What does the
    3. From Theory to Real-World Implications                            speech actually do?
    Legal definitions matter not only in courtrooms but
    also in administrative offices and university boardrooms. When campus protests call for
    intifada or praise Hamas, the legal implications are not hypothetical. If Jewish students
    feel threatened or excluded because of their identity or perceived affiliation with Israel,
    universities may face Title VI complaints, civil liability, and reputational damage. And those
    risks have grown, not receded.

    Several states have incorporated definitions of antisemitism—including IHRA—into their
    hate-crimes laws or education policies.80 The U.S. House of Representatives, in 2024,
    passed a resolution declaring anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism; 81 and more recently, the
    Trump administration has threatened to stop funding universities who fail to adopt broad
    definitions of and protections again antisemitism,82 further intensifying political pressure
    on institutions to adopt clear standards. Meanwhile, courts have begun weighing in. In
    one recent decision, a Texas Court of Appeals found that adopting the IHRA definition
    in a university speech code, without sufficient safeguards, risked violating the First
    Amendment.83 This highlights the fine line between legal protection and unconstitutional
    overreach.

    The American Civil Liberties Union has also raised red flags, warning that equating anti-
    Zionism with antisemitism in blanket terms could infringe on protected speech.84 And yet,
    the refusal to act in the face of virulent anti-Zionist harassment can equally run afoul of civil
    rights laws. Universities must navigate this terrain carefully—balancing their dual obligations
    to protect expressive freedoms and ensure nondiscriminatory educational environments.

 II. Experiencing Israel After October 7
 On July 7, 2024—exactly nine months after the October 7 attacks—I arrived in Israel as part
 of the Law Professors’ Mission. The country was visibly and viscerally in mourning. Inside
 Ben Gurion Airport, hundreds of red “kidnapped” posters covered the terminal walls. Each
 included the name and face of a hostage abducted by Hamas. Many were decorated with
 hand-drawn hearts, personal messages, and stickers from children. In a nation of roughly 9.3
 million, this was not symbolic art. It was the record of a society wounded by terror. The
 sheer volume of these posters rendered abstract casualty statistics impossible to ignore.85

 This kind of grief is not an exhibit
 in a law school seminar. It is not
 theoretical. The IHRA definition
 of antisemitism explicitly links
 contemporary hatred to the legacy
 of historical trauma.86 In Israel, that
 trauma is not historical. It is current.
 It exists on every wall, in every
 conversation, and in every legal
 briefing that followed on this trip.


 A . A R RI VAL AND F I RST
 IM P R E SSI ONS
 My encounter with the poster of
 baby Kfir Bibas occurred less than        Figure 1. Hostage posters were everywhere in Israel, constantly
                                           reminding of the ongoing tragedy. Credit: Seth Oranburg.
 fifteen minutes after I disembarked.
 He was nine months old when Hamas
 kidnapped him from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz.87 His toothless smile resembled my own
 daughter’s, who had been born just weeks earlier. I looked at his picture and experienced
 what no textbook could replicate. It became impossible to think about “hostages” as a
 category. These were not abstractions; they were lives—children, parents, siblings—reduced
 to slogans in political debate.

 Everyone I spoke with in Israel had been affected personally by the attacks. The scale
 of trauma was clear. With over 1,200 civilians killed, the per capita impact was greater
 than the September 11 attacks in the United States.88 A proportional attack on the U.S.
 would have killed more than 40,000 Americans. That figure maps the scale of grief onto a
 context familiar to U.S. academics, but it is still too clinical to express the reality of shared

    My own family was grieving, too,
    so perhaps I was more tuned in to
    this pain. My grandmother passed
    away five days before the trip. I live-
    streamed her funeral from Boston
    Logan Airport and boarded the flight        Figure 2. “Kidnapped” poster for Kfir Bibas were ubiquitous in
                                                Israel. Credit: Seth C. Oranburg.
    to Tel Aviv alone.

    My wife stayed in New Hampshire
    with our infant daughter. I made the decision to go because I believed that witnessing the
    aftermath of October 7 was not only morally necessary, but essential to understand what the
    legal categories—proportionality, distinction, incitement—actually mean in practice.


    B . M E MORY AND THE M ARKET PLACE
    We began Tuesday morning in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem. The memorial is built into the
    hillside and flanked by dense pine trees. Its architecture is deliberate: steep stone walls
    slowly envelop visitors in darkness as they descend into the memory of the Holocaust.

    Inside, glass vitrines display Zyklon B canisters, Nazi armbands, battered shoes, and yellow
    stars. A diorama of Auschwitz illustrates how Jews were deceived into lining up for death—
    ”showers” marked with signage, clothing shelves neatly labeled by size. An entire
    civilization corralled into death through bureaucracy and architectural precision.

    In that space, I recalled the IHRA’s
    warning about antisemitism that
    distorts or denies the Holocaust.89 It’s
    not just a rhetorical concern. It is a
    lived one. To claim that Jewish grief is
    overplayed, or that the Holocaust can
    be abstracted into a metaphor, is to
    stand in that museum and say nothing
    is real.

    From Yad Vashem, we proceeded to
    Mount Herzl. There, families gathered
    for a memorial honoring soldiers killed     Figure 3. Law Professors Mission to Israel group at a Yaad Vashem
    since October 7. The Israel Defense         exhibit. Credit: Shahar Azran.

 Later that day, we arrived at Hebrew University for a session titled “Approaches to Free
 Speech on Campus: U.S. vs. Israel.” The discussion was academic, but the stakes were
 personal. Law professors explained how legal norms around expression are shaped by
 context: Israel’s model is not like the United States’ because Israel’s classrooms are not
 like ours. For example, at least 16% of Hebrew University’s 24,000 students are Arab-
 Palestinians—about half from East Jerusalem and about half Israeli citizens.90 Most Jewish
 students are IDF veterans, many of whom fought combat operations against Palestinian
 forces.91 That makes classroom conversations about war deeply fraught. These are not
 hypothetical disagreements. They are literal wounds these students personally experience.92

 In the U.S., we debate whether chanting “from the river to the sea” is protected speech. In
 Israel, that chant echoes down the halls of classrooms where students on both sides of
 geopolitical lines have buried friends and family. Moreover, these conversations take place
 within sight of the Dome of the Rock, at the heart of the contest over ancient land. Context
 doesn’t just matter—it transforms the question entirely.

 That afternoon, we toured the Old
 City. We passed the Church of the Holy
 Sepulchre, where pilgrims knelt at the
 Stone of Anointing—the place believed
 to be where Jesus was prepared for
 burial. The scent of incense clung to the
 air.

 Then we walked to the Kotel, the
 Western Wall of the Second Temple.
 There, as I stood facing its timeworn
 Jerusalem stones, an ultra-Orthodox
 man approached and asked if I wanted
 to wrap tefillin—small leather boxes
 containing passages of Torah bound           Figure 4. Law Professors Mission to Israel Group at Hebrew
 to the head and arm during prayer. I         University, with the Dome of the Rock visible from the landing.
 responded in English, and he switched        Credit: Shahar Azran.

 languages with ease. We quickly
 discovered a shared connection: the same Chabad rabbi in New Hampshire. What began as
 a casual offer became a surprisingly intimate moment. He asked for a selfie. I agreed. And
 then I prayed.

 I cried as I prayed, but not from piety. This wall—sometimes called the Wailing Wall—invites
 catharsis. In that hot July sun, I felt my tears flow into a salty well of a million crises. For
 more than two thousand years, my ancestors sought this place as an opportunity to open
 their hearts and share their laments. And for a moment, I felt merged with that resonance.

    That night, we shared dinner at Mahane Yehuda, at Tali Friedman’s atelier. Tali lost many
    friends on October 7. Her children, both teenagers, had spiraled into depression after 10
    of their friends were murdered. And yet Tali cooked for us with joy and grace. She said
    preparing food helped her heal. This wasn’t just a meal. It was a ritual of survival.

    Tali said she wanted to make us feel at home, though her own had been shattered. That
    act—of feeding guests while grieving—said more about resilience than any slogan or
    placard ever could.

    One of our evening briefings was
    led by Professor Gerald Steinberg,
    a longtime scholar of international
    relations in Israel. Since the early 2000s,
    Steinberg has focused on the influence
    of prominent non-governmental
    organizations (NGOs)—including
    Amnesty International and Human Rights
    Watch—on public perceptions of Israel
    within the domains of human rights
    and international humanitarian law. He
    described this influence as a form of
    “soft power” that operates in tandem
    with kinetic violence, shaping the legal
                                                  Figure 6. Chef and market manager Tali Friedman cooks family
    and moral narrative through reports,          styles meals at her atelier as a means of nourish her dreams of an
    press coverage, and international             Jerusalem that is safe for Jews and Arabs alike. Credit: Shahar Azran.
    forums.

 C . B E A RI NG WI TNESS
 The next morning, before our mission group boarded a bus to visit to bear witness to the
 communities impacted in Southern Israel, I learned over breakfast how impactful this was
 to my Israeli faculty counterparts. The attacks on October 7 had a devastating impact on
 university life—especially at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), the only university in
 the Negev region and a key institution in southern Israel.95

 The BGU community suffered significant losses, with over 110 members killed, including
 students, faculty, and immediate relatives; five members taken hostage; and thousands
 displaced or called to reserve duty. Notably, Noa Argamani, a third-year computer science
 student, was among those kidnapped, her abduction widely publicized. Despite these
 challenges, BGU has demonstrated remarkable resilience, continuing its mission to support
 and rebuild the southern region. The university has provided housing for displaced individuals,
 expanded psychological services, and launched initiatives to bolster the local economy and
 community. BGU President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz emphasized the university’s pivotal role in
 Israel’s future, stating, “I believe BGU is the most important university for the future of Israel.”96

 Yet when we departed for the South, this experience was still abstracted. I did not even
 realize how detached I was until I came face to face with the reality of this war.

 1. Tekuma Car Graveyard
 The South presented a very different kind of classroom. We first stopped at the Tekuma Car
 Graveyard, which sits on the edge of Israel’s southern corridor, near the Gaza border. More
 than 800 civilian vehicles are parked here in silence—some mangled, some charred, many
 both. Together, they form a grim mosaic of everyday life turned to rubble.

 I filmed the wreckage of an ambulance as an IDF officer recounted its final moments: “This
 ambulance, which once sheltered youngsters at the Rim Nova Festival—a celebration meant
 to embody peace and love—was blasted with dozens of AK‑47 shots. Hand grenades
 were thrown into it, and then a rocket-propelled grenade set it aflame. When cleared, we
 recovered the remains of 18 people, including an 18‑year-old girl in a wheelchair.”97

 These were not military vehicles. They were sedans, hatchbacks, and mopeds. I filmed
 a burned-out white Audi A5—the same model I drive. As I stared at its melted frame, I
 imagined my wife and daughter in that car. What if it were us? These visceral images convert
 abstract statistics into personal sorrow.

    In law school, we teach doctrines like
    proportionality and distinction—legal
    rules meant to distinguish civilian from
    military targets, to balance force with
    necessity. But no statute, no legal theory,
    can fully account for the intimacy of grief    Figure 7. The author of this article interviews an IDF officer, who
                                                   explains how Hamas targeted this ambulance with assault rifles,
    embedded in a vehicle’s remains.               rocket propelled grenades, and hand grenades—and why this
                                                   constitutes war crimes.
    As I left Tekuma, I carried more than
    video footage. I carried the knowledge
    that these were not unfortunate accidents or collateral misfires. These were deliberate
    attacks on civilians. And no amount of legal abstraction can explain away the choice to turn
    a festival of peace into a furnace of death.

    This was not where our journey ended. But it was where any illusions ended.

    2. Kibbutz Nir Oz
    From Tekuma, we continued to Kibbutz Nir Oz. The setting felt eerily familiar. I had lived
    and worked at Kibbutz Hatzerim—just 20 miles away—twenty years earlier. Both were
    founded on socialist Zionist ideals. Both belonged to the same regional council. Both
    bore the same architectural simplicity: flat-roofed bungalows shaded by eucalyptus trees,
    communal dining halls, and narrow paved lanes where children once rode bicycles.

    Many of the kibbutz communities attacked on October 7—including Nir Oz and nearby
    Be’eri—were long associated with left-leaning politics and peace activism. Residents had
    volunteered for years to aid Palestinian civilians. Oded Lifshitz, a founder of Nir Oz, was a
    veteran journalist known for driving sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals.98 Vivian Silver, a peace
    activist from Be’eri, was murdered in her home after dedicating her life to coexistence
    efforts.99

    But Nir Oz had become something else entirely: a crime scene.

    The communal dining hall, once filled with laughter and shared meals, had been reduced
    to a scorched, hollow skeleton. The smell of destruction lingered in the air—an odor
    reminiscent of musky cork, or moldy cardboard left to rot in a damp basement. Our guide
    explained that the smell came from an industrial refrigerator that had been repurposed to
    store the burned and bullet-riddled bodies of the residents, because the morgues were
    too overwhelmed to receive them all.100 We could smell this from the mail room, where
    residents’ mailboxes were marked “kidnapped” or “murdered,” as appropriate.

 We toured the rest of the kibbutz.
 Shot-out windows glared at us
 like hollow eyes. Front doors were
 pockmarked with bullet holes. Some
 were still ajar. The heat had baked
 every surface into dust. We walked
 into homes where tables remained set
 for breakfast, where toys lay scattered
 on the floor. These were not military
 installations. They were family homes.
 And they had been invaded, burned,
 and destroyed with shocking precision.

 Later, when we viewed body camera
 footage recovered from Hamas               Figure 9. The communal dining hall of Kibbutz Nir Oz now
                                            functions as a memorial to the hostages and victims of October 7.
 terrorists, I recognized the exact rooms
 I had entered just days earlier.101 The
 crime scenes were no longer theoretical. I had smelled the ash. I had touched the walls.
 Watching those videos wasn’t like watching the news. It was like reliving a massacre.

 Our guide at Nir Oz was Sharone Lifshitz, a longtime resident. She wore a black “Bring
 Them Home Now!” t-shirt—the slogan of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.102 On
 October 7, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had kidnapped her parents, Oded and Yocheved
 Lifshitz. By the time we met Sharone, her mother had been released, but her father was

    Oded Lifshitz was an octogenarian
    peace activist. He regularly crossed
    into Gaza with a group called Road
    to Recovery, which arranged medical
    transport for Palestinians needing
    treatment at Israeli hospitals. Sharone
    described his kindness, his pacifism,
    and her refusal to hate in return.
    Despite the murder of her father
    and the horror of that day, she still
    believed in the possibility of peace and     Figure 10. Terrorists used accelerants to immolate civilian homes
                                                 at Kibbutz Nir Oz, rendering them remarkably damaged. Credit:
    supported a two-state solution.              Shahar Azran.

    But others we met did not share that
    view. Some saw the attack on Nir Oz as an attack not just on Jews, but on the very idea of
    peace. It was hard to disagree. The pogroms targeted leftist communities, many of which
    had spent decades building bridges with Palestinian neighbors. And it was those same
    communities—unarmed, unguarded—that were selected for annihilation.

    The October 7 attacks had a profound impact on peace activists residing in the Gaza
    envelope. Many of these individuals and communities, known for their longstanding
    commitment to coexistence and peace efforts, found themselves targets of the violence. For
    instance, Kibbutz Nir Oz and other communities had residents actively engaged in fostering
    dialogue and supporting Palestinian rights. The attacks not only resulted in tragic loss of life
    but also sent shockwaves through the peace movement in the region.104

    If there was a moment that redefined my understanding of anti-Zionism, it happened in
    Nir Oz. This was not criticism of Israel’s military policy. It was not opposition to settlement
    expansion. It was the deliberate, ideological slaughter of pacifists. It was anti-Zionism turned
    genocidal.

    And it happened in a place that once looked just like the kibbutz where I came of age.

    3. Nova Festival Testimony
    Later that afternoon, we arrived at the site of the Nova Music Festival. The air was still. Trees
    swayed in the heat. But it was not pleasant. This was a crime scene. More than 360 civilians
    were murdered here during a sunrise dance party. Dozens more were abducted. Hamas
    terrorists had planned the attack in advance, coordinating rocket fire, ground infiltration,
    and ambushes on fleeing festivalgoers.105

    There, we met Bar Hinitz, a survivor. He stood beside the stage where the massacre began.
    His voice shook, but he spoke with clarity. “Every time I start to tell the story,” he said, “I
    always tell people that in the way of recovery, I learned to really listen to myself.”106 He

 Bar explained that Nova was not just
 a party. It was a community grounded
 in peace and mutual respect. “In those
 kind of parties,” he said, “if you sit for
 a second alone, someone will come
 to you and say, ‘Hey brother, are you
 good?’”107 The music was global—DJs
 from Japan, Brazil, India. The crowd
 was young. The atmosphere was
 joyful.
                                              Figure 11. A law professor from the Mission group takes a
                                              photograph of the mural dedicated to the young partygoers Hamas
 He had arrived at 1:00 a.m. with his
                                              murdered at the Nova Festival on October 7. Credit: Shahar Azran.
 best friend, Omer. “We came to
 celebrate life,” he said. “We didn’t
 bring much—just a mattress and
 two chairs.”108 At 6:30 a.m., they
 stood near the main stage as the sun
 began to rise. That moment—sunrise
 at a trance festival—is usually the
 emotional high point. But instead of
 music, they saw rockets overhead.

 “The DJ comes to the mic and says,
 ‘Guys, red alert, red alert, it’s not a
 drill, evacuate as quick as you can.’”109
 Chaos followed. They jumped into
 their car, fled the parking lot, got
 turned around, and headed in the             Figure 12. Bar Hinitz stands at the Nova Festival grounds and
 wrong direction—toward the terrorists.       describes how he escaped from terrorists who murdered his friends
 “One guy shouted from his car, ‘There        there on October 7. Credit: Shahar Azran.
 is a terrorist here—go back!’”110

 Eventually, police waved survivors east into the fields. Bar and Omer followed. Five
 minutes later, they heard gunshots. “Automatic weapons,” he recalled. People ran. Some
 abandoned their cars. “We didn’t know where to run,” he said. “Just hide, and roll between
 spots, so they won’t recognize you.”111

 Bar dove into a bush. “I saw a guy I knew from my hometown,” he said. “He pushed
 two girls into the bush, and I jumped in after them.”112 They stayed hidden for nearly 40
 minutes. At one point, he noticed a friend had a birthday candle. “I told him, this is the
 time to make a wish, my friend,” he said. “And we laughed. We actually laughed, inside the
 bush.”113

    After escaping the bush, Bar reunited with the man from his hometown—the same one
    who’d saved others. They embraced at a healing center weeks later. “Turns out our brothers
    are best friends,” Bar said. “They live in the same house in the army.”116

    At one point during the escape, a police officer shouted, “Come after me! They’re after
    us!”117 Bar ran behind him through a tree-lined field and open terrain. “People started
    screaming, ‘Split up! Don’t be in a group!’ But I knew—I cannot lose that officer.”118 Along
    the way, he gave water to dehydrated survivors. “We walked fast, to catch the officer, and
    tried not to scare the others.”119

    Bar had served in the army. But nothing prepared him for that day. “There were times in the
    army they woke me up at night for a radar alert, and it turned out to be a plastic bag,” he
    said. “But this was not plastic. It was real.”120 He prayed out loud. He cracked jokes. “It kept
    me alive. It saved my spirit.”121

    Eventually, he reached a shelter in the town of Patish. He found food, water, and other
    survivors. But the trauma was just beginning. “I didn’t know what was happening outside,”
    he said. “But people started calling me, asking: Where is Omer?”122 Omer, his childhood
    best friend, had gone to a nearby festival. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Days later, Bar
    learned that Omer had been murdered.123

    That moment broke him. But it also deepened his resolve to tell the truth. “Talking is
    healing,” he said. “It helps the healing process. I want to tell people what really happened
    here.”124

    Bar later joined a theater therapy group with other survivors. They met weekly at the Cameri
    Theatre in Tel Aviv. “Twelve of us,” he said, “all with passion for acting, for music, for telling
    stories. We had psychologists with us. We practiced acting, psychodrama. We’re planning a
    show.”

    He ended with a message to American law students. He asked us to imagine going to
    a peaceful music festival—like Lollapalooza—and then encountering “the very opposite
    of what’s human.”125 “Imagine thousands of terrorists starting to shoot everybody. This
    happened. It’s not politics. It’s people.”126 He looked around the site—at the burnt earth,
    the rebuilt memorials, the triangle of names. “I believe in truth,” he said. “I believe in
    remembering. And I believe there is good in the world.”127

    4. IDF BBQ and Reflections from Soldiers
    Our descent into the stark realities of war reached its climax at the IDF base near Nahal
    Oz. The entrance was guarded by two Merkava tanks. There, we toured the remains of
    the command center for Combat Intelligence Unit 414, a surveillance and monitoring
    post staffed entirely by young female soldiers. On October 7, Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades

 International law draws a clear line between combatants and civilians—but what I witnessed
 at Nahal Oz showed how that line blurs in asymmetric warfare. These young women died
 unarmed and half naked. They became the first casualties of a war they did not know had
 begun. Definitionally, I recognized these girls were lawful combatants to the extent the al-
 Qassam Brigades started the Gaza-Israel war that morning. However, that definition did not
 erase the horror of their deaths—suffocated by poison gas while in their nightclothes—and
 fractured lines I had drawn in my mind
 between battlefields and bedrooms.

 The control center itself was a
 blackened ruin. Keyboards and mice
 had melted into surreal puddles. The
 walls had collapsed inward. The air
 still smelled faintly of chemical smoke.
 I had studied arson as a doctrinal
 matter, but this wasn’t theory. This air
 had poisoned people. The scene was
 reminiscent of “showers” and ovens at
 Auschwitz.

 Immediately afterward, I interviewed
 two young women stationed at the
 base. Their rifles—long, Vietnam           Figure 13. Melted keyboards at the Nahal Oz command center.
                                            Credit: Shahar Azran.
 War–era M-16s—looked absurdly
 large against their small frames. And
 yet their voices were steady. One of
 them said: “We don’t want to harm
 any uninvolved people. But we all
 have to remember that our shared
 enemy is Hamas. They’re hurting us
 and the Palestinians as well.” The
 other added: “We can live together
 once we take down Hamas. We could
 all live together.” Their ultimate
 message—”peace and love”—was not
 naive. It was defiant. Their message
 cut through the slogans I had heard
 shouted on campus. This was not war-       Figure 14. The author interviewed Israeli soldiers who shared a
                                            message of “peace and love.” The wall to the speaker’s right
 mongering. It was hope.130
                                            shows 7.62 caliber bullet holes from the October 7 attack. Credit:
                                            Seth Oranburg.

    Over dinner, I spoke with these men, who were just boys to my eyes. I sat with a crew of
    heavy machine gun operators who were half my age. They joked about being half-deaf, too.
    They spoke about what they had seen—how they experienced Hamas fighters pop out of
    hidden tunnel entrances and from doors to strike their colleagues. They spoke about fallen
    comrades and, clearly, about the violence they had meted out in return. These soldiers did
    not echo the “peace and love” message of their female counterparts. They dismissed the
    possibility of reconciliation outright. They did not think the end of war was near.

    Once the meal ended, we helped clean up the camp. We gathered trash, wiped tables,
    and packed up gear. It felt right to do the work. There was nothing noble about it, yet it felt
    useful.

    In the quiet moments after cleanup, I spoke to a man about twice my age who wore a
    yarmulke and tzitzit, hallmarks of his Orthodox Jewish faith. He identified himself as a “old
    hippie.” I told him what the women soldiers had said, and what the male soldiers had said,
    and asked for his reconciliation of the two positions. He told me the only way peace would
    come was if the Jewish people returned to God—not just in belief, but in action; not just in
    prayer, but in observance. Only then, he said, would the Messiah come and bring peace to
    the whole world. His words were quiet but firm. He believed that redemption would follow
    repentance. Not negotiation. Not war. Torah.

    We boarded the bus to Tel Aviv. On the way back to the hotel, I stared out the window,
    thinking about the command center, the women who died there, the men who had returned
    from battle, the soldiers who still stood watch. I thought about their voices. Their smells. Their
    clarity. Their pain. And I realized that nothing I had taught in class prepared me for this.


    D. THE PA I N CENTER
    On Thursday morning, we gathered for breakfast in the Tel Aviv hotel dining room. A
    slideshow on international humanitarian law flickered quietly on a television screen above
    the buffet. Coffee cups clinked against saucers. Colleagues murmured about upcoming
    flights and academic projects. After days of witnessing grief and devastation, the return to
    routine felt surreal. But the illusion shattered within the hour.

    Our destination: the IDF’s southern communications command. What we found there could
    not have been further from the warm neutrality of hotel coffee service or academic slides.
    We waited at a security checkpoint, then walked into a nondescript concrete building with
    linoleum floors, plastic chairs, and buzzing fluorescent lighting. We were ushered into a stark

 She explained that this was not news
 footage. It was evidence of war
 crimes.131 The compilation included
 bodycam recordings from the
 Hamas terrorists themselves, CCTV
 surveillance, dashboard cameras,
 mobile phones of both attackers
 and victims, and home security
 systems from kibbutzim and private
 residences.132 The IDF had shown
 this material to diplomats, journalists,
 and lawmakers around the world in
 an attempt to ensure that the crimes
 of October 7 would not be reduced
 to rumor or buried by subsequent             Figure 15. An IDF officers introductions the law professors to the
                                              footage we are about to watch. Credit: Shahar Azran.
 headlines.133

 The officers also told us what we
 would not be seeing. Despite the existence of verified recordings of rape and sexual
 mutilation, the IDF chose to omit that footage from this compilation. They cited not only the
 moral weight of retraumatizing survivors and their families, but a religious principle: Jewish
 modesty forbids the public exposure of victims, even in death.134

 1. Hamas Raw Footage
 While the footage as a whole left a striking impression on me that I expressed as “staring
 into the maw of hell,” several sequences remain seared into my memory.

 I was transported back to Kibbutz Nir Oz, where I had walked yesterday. Now, a terrorist,
 exuding an eerie nonchalance, shot a pet dog with an AK-47 assault rifle before continuing
 his assault on the civilian community. This casual act of cruelty that underscored the utter
 disregard for life, human or otherwise.135 But worse was yet to come.

 In another segment, two young boys, no more than ten years old, ran in their underwear
 into a shed, trying to disappear into the corrugated metal walls. A terrorist lobbed a
 grenade inside. Their father, driven by the primal instinct to protect, rushed in. When the
 explosion settled, the boys emerged—one clutching a bleeding eye that he would later
 lose—while their father did not emerge at all. The act was neither strategic nor tactical. It
 was pure, indiscriminate slaughter. The kind of violence that betrays no military objective,
 no political grievance—only a deeply embedded ideological hatred.136

 Other clips exposed the mutilation of bodies, the systematic execution of families, and,
 most chillingly, the ritualized celebration of murder. In one, a terrorist used a garden tool to

    The most relevant footage for this paper’s thesis on antisemitism was audio-only. A terrorist,
    having just slain a civilian, picked up the victim’s phone and called his parents. In a voice
    dripping with pride, he boasted of the number of Jews he had killed. Not “Zionists.” Not
    “Israeli Soldiers.” Jews. As he demanded that his father put his mother on the line to hear
    his kill count, he punctuated his declarations with cries of “Allahu Akbar.” His words made it
    clear that the attack was not merely against Israel, nor was it confined to the military conflict
    over territorial control. The massacre was an explicitly Jewish one, in the murderers’ own
    words.139

    These are not memories from a screenwriter or a war correspondent, but from a law
    professor bearing witness on a scholarly mission of legal and moral import. What I saw
    forced a transformation—not only of belief, but of interpretive framework.

    For many in the West, the Israel-Palestine conflict has long been filtered through the lens of
    competing nationalisms, territorial claims, and diplomatic failures. The footage we watched
    at the IDF command center shattered that paradigm. This was not a geopolitical struggle
    between two warring factions. It was an antisemitic pogrom carried out with modern
    weaponry. Under international law, such acts—targeting civilians, desecrating bodies, and
    celebrating death—constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    Any serious discussion of antisemitism must now account for this reality. Any argument that
    anti-Zionism is wholly distinct from antisemitism must answer for these images. Any claim
    that Hamas’ actions are merely resistance to occupation must contend with the scenes of
    children executed in front of their parents, of elderly women burned alive, of young girls
    taken as hostages—crimes motivated not by political grievance, but by genocidal ideology.

    If one believes that slaughtering children is a justified tactic in pursuit of political goals, then
    one must be willing to defend that moral standard when applied universally—and not only
    when applied to Jews. Otherwise, it is not resistance. It is Jew-hatred. For those of us who
    watched, there is no longer any moral ambiguity. There is only the question of what we will
    do with the knowledge we now possess.

    2. Hostages and Missing Families Forum
    We left the command center and drove toward our next destination: the Tel Aviv
    headquarters of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. The building’s modern glass-and-
    metal exterior gave no indication of the trauma housed inside. Inside, the walls were lined
    with posters and photographs of the missing—children, parents, grandparents.

    Among them was the photograph of baby Kfir Bibas. He looked like any other infant—his
    round face and orange hair almost cheerful—but the photo was out of date. It was taken
    before he was kidnapped. This baby spent half his life in Hamas terror tunnels as a political
    pawn. We later learned he died in captivity.140

 Their testimonies were raw. Not
 staged. Not stylized. Their pain was not
 theoretical. It had names, birthdates,
                                               Figure 16. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum produces
 and last known locations.                     many of the posters that were ubiquitous in Israel during the fact-
                                               finding mission. Credit: Shahar Azran.
 It is worth noting that Israelis are not
 unified in this message. Some prioritize
 winning the war over returning the hostages.142 But crucially, the Forum is itself criticizing
 and protesting the Israeli government. This underscores an essential point: opposition to
 Israeli policy is not inherently antisemitic. These families—many of them deeply embedded
 in Israeli civic life—reject both government strategy and antisemitism alike.

 It also shows why the labels “Zionist” and “anti-Zionist” often obscure more than they
 clarify. This Forum is just one of several groups advocating for the hostages. And while all
 called for the return of their loved ones, they were not politically unified. Some denounced
 the government’s military response. Others demanded stronger action. They were united
 only by what had been taken from them.143

 Above all, this experience revealed something basic and profound: there is nothing
 especially Zionist or anti-Zionist about the conviction that kidnapping babies is wrong. The
 failure of universities to condemn such atrocities is, at best, based on ignorance. At worst, it
 is rooted in Jew hatred.

 3. International Law Briefing at S. Horowitz & Co.
 After our emotional sessions at the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, we attended a
 legal briefing at the Tel Aviv offices of S. Horowitz & Co., one of Israel’s premier law firms.
 The session was led by Dr. Omri Sender, Partner and Chair of the Public International Law
 Practice at the firm, who previously served as Counsel at the International Court of Justice
 and the World Bank.144

 Dr. Sender provided a comprehensive analysis of the roles and jurisdictions of the ICC
 and ICJ in addressing alleged war crimes and state conduct in conflicts such as the
 one unfolding around us. He elucidated key legal doctrines, including proportionality,
 distinction, and the protection of civilians, which are central to the lawful conduct of
 hostilities under international law.

    This dissonance connected back to
                                                  Figure 17. The Law Professors Mission to Israel attended many
    insights from Professor Steinberg,            legal briefings including this one hosted by Dr. Omri Sender.
    who described the legal dimension             Credit: Shahar Azran.
    not only as a site of accountability, but
    increasingly as a theater of what he
    called “lawfare”: the strategic use of legal mechanisms to delegitimize Israel’s self-defense,
    disrupt arms transfers, and reframe asymmetric violence as justified resistance.145 Steinberg
    argued that NGOs and UN bodies often employ legal terms—such as apartheid, genocide,
    and disproportionate force—not as neutral descriptors, but as part of an ideological
    campaign to reclassify aggression as victimhood. He cautioned that such narratives often
    migrate from international forums to university discourse, shaping campus norms around
    speech, protest, and institutional neutrality.

    This session underscored a sobering reality: while international law provides essential
    mechanisms for accountability, it often struggles to fully encapsulate the brutality and
    human cost of war. Legal theories and principles may define the boundaries of acceptable
    conduct, but they cannot restore the lives lost or heal the trauma endured. This realization
    highlighted the limitations of the law in addressing the profound complexities of human
    suffering during conflict.


    E . R E F L ECTI ONS F ROM A RO O FT O P
    After the intense sessions and heart-wrenching encounters of the day, our final gathering
    took place on a rooftop in Tel Aviv. As the sun set over the city, faculty from our diverse
    mission cohort joined us for farewell drinks, offering a collective moment of reflection. We
    exchanged impressions of what we had seen and what we would carry forward—each of us
    processing, in our own way, the unbearable images and testimonies we had witnessed.

    Professor Adam Mossoff, reflecting on the trip, said simply, “This is not just about Israel.
    This is a clash of civilizations that is already engulfing the United States and Europe.”146
    He reminded us that what we had seen was not merely local horror, but a front in a much
    broader struggle for liberalism, human rights, and pluralism. Mossoff’s words challenged us
    to recognize that silence in the face of such atrocities is not neutrality—it is abdication.

 Professor Josh Blackman chronicled each step of the trip in a ten-part blog series that
 stands as a vital record of the mission’s substance and emotional weight.148 His writings
 capture the impact of seeing Nir Oz, the Nova site, and the surveillance footage, not just
 as events, but as a narrative that redefines how we must think about war, law, and moral
 obligation.

 The moment demanded not just scholarship, but witness. That insight reshaped my
 understanding of legal realism. I had long appreciated Holmes’ injunction that “the life of
 the law has not been logic: it has been experience.”149 But this trip revealed the limits of
 abstraction in a new light. Legal categories cannot, and must not, stand apart from lived
 suffering. As realists like Karl Llewellyn recognized, law is not just doctrine—it is a practice
 embedded in institutional response to human conflict.150 The gap between legal principle
 and lived experience is where law either earns its legitimacy or forfeits it.

 When we stood on that Tel Aviv rooftop, not as detached observers, but as changed
 scholars. For those of us who returned to our campuses, our classrooms, and our legal
 writings, the burden of memory has become the burden of moral responsibility.

 In the next section, I turn from narrative to legal argument. But I do so with no illusions. The
 events I have described are not anecdotal—they are foundational. Any serious analysis of
 legal responsibility in this conflict must begin with what I saw.

    Atrocity reveals the boundaries of law’s reach.151 Legalism’s failure is rooted in the inability to
    respond adequately when confronted with moral collapse.152 October 7 underscored those
    boundaries with devastating clarity. Legal frameworks did not prevent the violence; they did
    not constrain it, deter it, or even help explain it. Law remains essential, but insufficient. At
    best, it sets minimal guardrails against total collapse. Those guardrails failed—in southern
    Israel, and in the institutional responses that followed. Mistaking what law permits for
    what leadership requires is not a constitutional error: it is a civic failure.153 The question of
    whether to act, speak, or remain silent does not depend on whether Congress adopts the
    IHRA definition or whether Title VI enforcement expands. It depends on whether universities
    understand themselves not merely as legally compliant entities, but as civic institutions
    entrusted with the cultivation of moral judgment.

    This Part examines that structural failure of legalism through three overlapping frameworks:
    legal realism, classical liberalism, and virtue ethics. Legal realism explains how institutions
    use procedural abstraction to obscure moral responsibility. Classical liberalism reminds us
    that liberty requires not neutrality, but integrity—coherence between institutional purpose
    and institutional action. And virtue ethics offers a vocabulary for institutional character: a
    way to navigate complexity not through rigid rules, but through habits of discernment,
    courage, and restraint.

    The analysis begins with a critique of abstraction, which seems to be the dominant mode
    of reasoning in campus governance, where university leaders invoke neutrality, procedural
    fairness, or definitional ambiguity to avoid making substantive judgments. That framework
    cannot withstand ideological violence. It collapses when weaponized rhetoric overwhelms
    administrative process.

    This Part concludes by proposing a liberal-realist model for reform—one grounded in lived
    experience, institutional pattern recognition, and the normative traditions that define civic
    education at its best.

    The goal is not perfection. It is integrity, lest liberal institutions, in the name of neutrality,
    abandon their mission and cede their future to those who would destroy the very conditions
    of civic life they were built to protect.154

 The limits of institutional neutrality are particularly
 apparent considering increasing evidence that
 campus protest was not the grassroots results of
                                                                      American law has
 student speech but rather was the internationally                 long struggled with
 orchestrated efforts of NGOs related to terrorist                 the tension between
 organizations. In May 2024, survivors of the
                155
                                                              principle and practice.
 October 7 attacks filed a federal lawsuit against
 National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP)
 and the AJP Educational Foundation Inc., also known as American Muslims for Palestine
 (AMP). The plaintiffs alleged that these organizations functioned as collaborators and
 propagandists for Hamas, using propaganda to recruit and intimidate college students to
 serve as supporters for Hamas on campuses and beyond.156 In August 2024, a Virginia court
 ordered American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) to release records related to allegations of
 the group funding Hamas and other international terrorist organizations. This legal action
 aimed to uncover potential financial ties between AMP and Hamas.157 In October 2024, the
 U.S. Department of Treasury reported that the student-facing group Samidoun is a “sham
 charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of
 Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.”158

 In February 2025, a former Hamas hostage testified that his terrorist captor claimed to be
 working with “allies” at universities.159 In March 2025, a group of U.S. and Israeli citizens,
 including relatives of individuals affected by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel,
 filed the related amended complaint in this lawsuit in Manhattan federal court.160 The suit
 accuses pro-Palestinian organizations at Columbia University, including Columbia Students
 for Justice in Palestine (SJP), of operating as Hamas’s “propaganda arm” in New York City
 and on campus. The plaintiffs allege that these groups coordinated with Hamas to support
 its attacks and engaged in activities that provided illegal public relations services for the
 terrorist organization. Notably, the lawsuit claims that some defendants had prior knowledge
 of the October 7 attack, citing an Instagram post from Columbia SJP made moments before
 the assault, stating, “We are back!!”161 If some of these allegations prove true, they indicate
 that campus neutrality policies permitted universities to become propaganda arms of
 terrorist organizations.

 Classical legal thought has relied on abstraction to generate general rules: speech must
 be protected; discrimination must be prohibited; neutrality must be maintained. But
 both classical liberals and legal realists have warned against the dangers of abstraction
 untethered from context. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously wrote that “the life of the

    Legal realists pushed these insights further. They showed how the law on the books
    frequently diverges from law in action and explained how legal realism emerged in response
    to discrepancies between formal legal principles and lived experience.165 Cass Sunstein
    and Thomas Miles demonstrated empirically that judicial ideology influences outcomes in
    measurable, often predictable ways.166 Elizabeth Mertz, highlighting how legal education
    inculcates particular interpretive habits, documented that legal reasoning is shaped less by
    doctrine than by professional training and institutional culture.167 Shauhin Talesh, in turn,
    revealed how private actors reshape regulatory regimes to maintain formal compliance
    while minimizing substantive accountability.168

    These realist tools are not inherently progressive. They are simply observational—and they
    show that abstraction, when elevated over action, produces institutional evasion.

    The university is no exception. When Jew-hatred or anti-Zionist intimidation escalates on
    campus, many institutions respond not with moral clarity but with procedural neutrality.
    They cite the First Amendment. They defer to protest guidelines. They “monitor the
    situation.” Yet they often refuse to say what must be said: that targeting Jewish students
    with eliminationist rhetoric is wrong—not just potentially unlawful, but morally corrosive and
    institutionally disqualifying.

    This paralysis often masquerades as fairness. University leaders claim they are constrained
    by the ambiguity of definitions. They invoke the IHRA definition, or the Nexus Document,
    or the Jerusalem Declaration. Each of these frameworks has strengths and weaknesses.
    But none is dispositive. Some warn that its misuse in regulatory settings can chill protected
    speech and distort its intended application.169 David Schraub has critiqued the IHRA’s
    coherence when deployed in legal adjudication.170 And Nexus Task Force members have
    cautioned against using any definition as a substitute for context-based judgment.171

    But the problem is deeper than definitional variance. It is the institutional habit of using
    definitions as shields against responsibility. As Stern himself wrote, “This was not written
    to be a campus hate speech code.”172 When universities respond to Jew-hatred with yet
    another reference to definitional frameworks, they are not exercising legal restraint. They are
    evading moral discernment.

    Definitions are useful tools. They assist in training, policy drafting, and pattern recognition. But
    they cannot substitute for judgment. They do not tell a university president what to say when
    protestors chant “Death to Zionists” outside a Jewish student center. They do not tell a faculty
    committee how to respond when a tenured professor celebrates the mass murder of civilians
    as political resistance. Nor do they absolve leadership from the obligation to lead.

 The next Section offers one path forward: institutions must act with virtue.


 B . VIRTU E ETHI CS A S THE ET HO S O F LIBERAL INS T IT UT IO N S
 If abstraction fails to guide institutions through moral crises, what should take its place? One
 answer—arguably the oldest—is virtue. Classical liberalism is often misunderstood as value-
 neutral, concerned only with rules, not ends. But its founders knew better. A functioning
 liberal society requires more than legal protections. It requires citizens capable of exercising
 judgment and institutions willing to cultivate that capacity. That is the realm of virtue ethics.

 Virtue ethics begins not with rules or consequences but with character. As Aristotle taught,
 virtue is the mean between vices of excess and deficiency—courage, for instance, lies
 between rashness and cowardice.173 But this is not merely a matter of temperament. Virtue
 is cultivated through habituation, practical reasoning (phronesis), and a life oriented toward
 the good.174 Kenneth Marcus has applied this insight to campus Jew-hatred, arguing that
 Jewish institutions must avoid both alarmism and passive quietism by embracing the
 Aristotelian mean.175

 Liberal institutions cannot afford to be morally passive. They must teach, model, and uphold
 civic virtues—not only tolerance, but courage, integrity, and responsibility. This insight is
 not foreign to the Jewish tradition. Maimonides, drawing on Aristotle, taught that the path
 to divine service begins with moral formation: through repeated, intentional actions, the
 individual shapes their soul.176 For Maimonides as for Aristotle, virtue is not innate—it is
 learned, practiced, and institutionalized. When universities fail to form character, or worse,
 reward its abandonment, they betray their educational mission.

 This view finds support across liberal, religious, and philosophical traditions. Leon Kass
 argues that liberal education must aim not just at knowledge, but at moral seriousness:
 “To be free is not to be neutral. It is to be good.”177 In his later work, Kass deepens this
 theme, insisting that human flourishing requires institutions committed to meaning,
 responsibility, and reverence—not merely the transmission of information.178 Robert P.
 George similarly defends liberal education as a formative project: one that cultivates civic
 character and virtue, not relativism or ideological drift.179 Anthony Kronman, warning against
 the abandonment of moral purpose in elite universities, argues that liberal education must
 recover its formative core or risk irrelevance.180 Jonathan Sacks affirms that a free society
 rests not only on law, but on virtues that law cannot command: integrity, humility, and
 communal responsibility.181

 Robert Post reinforces this point within the legal structure of academic freedom. Academic
 freedom, he argues, does not exist for its own sake—it serves the mission of disciplined
 truth-seeking, and it is legitimate for universities to distinguish between inquiry and

    If law is not enough, and abstraction is not enough, then
    institutions must recover an internal ethic—one that orients
                                                                        If law is not enough,
    their decisions not merely by what is permissible, but by
    what is right. This does not mean embracing ideological                   and abstraction
    litmus tests or censoring dissent. Quite the opposite. It                   is not enough,
    means cultivating judgment: the ability to distinguish                   then institutions
    legitimate critique from eliminationist rhetoric, protest from
    persecution, and principle from performative ambiguity.
                                                                              must recover an
                                                                               internal ethic—
    This also means rethinking what university leadership
    entails. A president is not merely a compliance officer or a
                                                                              one that orients
    brand manager. She is, like Aristotle’s phronimos, a practical         their decisions not
    leader whose role is to discern the good in concrete                    merely by what is
    circumstances and act accordingly. When administrators
                                                                          permissible, but by
    issue vague statements to appease all sides while students
    are being targeted, they are not exercising virtue. They are                 what is right.
    avoiding it.

    Virtue ethics demands more. It demands that universities ask not only “What are we allowed
    to do?” but “What kind of institution are we becoming?” It demands that when students
    call for the dismantling of Jewish self-determination, the response is not procedural
    equivocation, but moral clarity. Not censorship, but condemnation. Not neutrality, but
    courage.

    The next Section explores how institutions grounded in liberal principles can recover that
    courage—by aligning policy not with ideology, but with integrity.


    C . IN S TI TU TI ONA L I NTEGRIT Y AN D T HE C LAS S IC AL LIBERAL
    M A N D ATE
    The classical liberal tradition does not require institutions to remain neutral in the face of
    illiberal ideologies. On the contrary, it demands integrity: a coherent alignment between
    purpose, structure, and conduct. A liberal university exists to cultivate reasoned inquiry,
    civic character, and the transmission of knowledge. These are not neutral goods. They are
    normative ends—and they require the institution to draw lines.

    Too often, university leaders confuse liberalism with passivity. They invoke free speech,
    neutrality, and inclusiveness not as instruments of inquiry, but as shields against controversy.
    But when those principles are severed from the university’s mission, they no longer serve
    liberty. They serve abdication.

    Friedrich Hayek warned against such confusion. For Hayek, liberty depended on general
    rules applied without arbitrariness—but not on institutional paralysis.184 Richard Epstein

 This drift is not theoretical. It is institutional. Universities increasingly operate according to
 incentives that reward branding over principle, risk management over moral responsibility,
 and short-term appeasement over long-term integrity. James Q. Wilson, writing about
 public bureaucracies, showed how institutions develop internal cultures that often diverge
 from their stated missions.187 Derek Bok made the same point in the context of higher
 education: universities, he warned, are becoming more responsive to donor pressure and
 activist disruption than to their core values.188 Sanford Levinson calls on universities to
 overcome their “institutional self-doubt” and reclaim the civic foundations that once gave
 coherence to their public role.189

 This failure of integrity is nowhere more evident than in the handling of Jew-hatred. Ruth
 Wisse has documented the liberal tendency to abandon Jews when ideological movements
 weaponize the language of justice against them.190 Anthony Kronman adds that moral
 relativism has displaced the formative mission of the university, leaving it unable to respond
 with clarity when its own norms are under siege.191

 Even within more progressive frameworks, this critique has force. Sigal Ben-Porath argues
 for “inclusive freedom”—not the flattening of moral judgment, but the integration of free
 expression with the institutional obligation to cultivate civic belonging and intellectual
 honesty.192 Michael Walzer puts it more starkly: liberal neutrality, if applied without
 judgment, collapses in the face of organized illiberalism.193 Amy Wax has similarly insisted
 that academic freedom exists to serve truth-seeking, not ideological conformity.194

 This institutional failure becomes most visible when universities face speech that is
 technically protected but morally corrosive. When students chant for the elimination of
 Zionists, or when faculty glorify mass violence as decolonial
 resistance, university leaders fall back on neutrality. They
 claim their hands are tied by constitutional doctrine. But as
                                                                               To be clear: the
 Robert Post has argued, academic freedom is not a license
 for ideological abuse. It is a structure for inquiry, and it                 classical liberal
 carries obligations to sustain the conditions that make inquiry           university should
 possible.195                                                                          not censor
 To be clear: the classical liberal university should not censor                dissenting views,
 dissenting views, nor impose ideological conformity. But it must                     nor impose
 distinguish between disagreement and dehumanization. It must
                                                                                      ideological
 recognize when speech ceases to be civic dissent and becomes
 ideological aggression. And it must respond—not through                             conformity.
 punishment, but through principled speech, moral leadership,
 and institutional clarity.

 This is not a departure from liberalism. It is its fulfillment. Liberalism, properly understood,
 is not relativism. It is a structured commitment to individual dignity, civic equality, and the

    D. A L I BERA L - REAL I ST F R AM EWO RK FO R IN S T IT UT IO NAL
    R E F O RM
    The classical liberal university cannot afford to remain inert in the face of ideological
    extremism. But neither can it respond with abstract proclamations or reactive censorship.
    The institutional answer lies not in slogans, nor in silence, but in a disciplined framework for
    principled governance—a framework that fuses liberal ideals with empirical realism.

    Cary Nelson offers a sobering account of what happens when universities abandon this
    balance. In his book-length essay Mindless, Nelson documents how anti-Zionist ideology on
    campus morphed into open antisemitism, catalyzed by faculty and student complicity and
    institutional paralysis. Encampments across global campuses—Columbia, UCLA, Sydney,
    Sciences Po—were not forums for reasoned debate. They were, in Nelson’s words, “large,
    organized protests against the idea of a university.”196 The chants glorified violence, the
    speakers justified mass atrocity, and the administrators largely stood down. In many cases,
    university presidents could not even articulate whether calls for genocide violated their
    codes of conduct.197

    These are not isolated failures. They are systemic. What Nelson reveals is a pattern of
    intellectual abdication: campus actors refusing to apply their own standards consistently,
    retreating into neutrality while their institutions become hostile to inquiry itself. As he
    observes, “Anti-Zionist ideology now dominates entire departments, not just fringe
    activists,” and faculty who celebrate mass violence are rarely sanctioned, much less
    challenged.198

    How should a liberal university respond?

    First, it must distinguish between expressive diversity and institutional virtue. A university
    committed to inquiry does not suppress dissent—but it also does not reward ideological
    extremism. Tenure and promotion decisions should reflect scholarly standards, not political
    litmus tests. Nelson’s example of professors like Joseph Massad, who celebrated the
    October 7 massacre in The Electronic Intifada the day after it occurred, illustrates the
    collapse of such standards.199 This is not protected disagreement; it is academic dishonor.

    Second, institutions must reject the false equivalence between psychological safety and
    intellectual challenge. As Nelson writes, “Universities are not in the business of providing
    intellectual safety. Intellectual discovery requires challenge and risk; psychological safety
    helps make that possible.”200 But when entire student populations—especially Jewish
    students—report feeling physically and socially unsafe, administrators cannot hide behind
    free speech formalism. They must act to reestablish the preconditions of inquiry. That
    includes condemning hate speech, reasserting institutional values, and using non-punitive
    tools of leadership.

    Third, universities should develop—and publish—clear policy toolkits. These need not
    be rigid rules, but they must equip leaders to act consistently and justly. Robert George

 Fourth, institutions must cultivate the habits of virtue at scale. This includes educating
 students on civic pluralism, resisting ideological capture in hiring and curriculum, and
 restoring the moral voice of the university. As Leon Kass has written, liberal education must
 be more than training in reason—it must be a formation
 in character.204 And as Nelson urges, administrators
 must act not as risk managers, but as stewards of the
 university’s moral identity.205
                                                                          Liberalism demands
                                                                  that we respond not by
 This is the liberal-realist synthesis. Realism demands
                                                                suppressing expression,
 that we observe what is happening on our campuses:
 organized efforts to expel Jews from public life in the            but by articulating—
 name of decolonization. Liberalism demands that               clearly, consistently, and
 we respond not by suppressing expression, but by               courageously—what the
 articulating—clearly, consistently, and courageously—
 what the university stands for.
                                                                   university stands for.

 The final section returns to where this paper began: to the definitional ambiguities and
 ideological disputes that make antisemitism so difficult to confront in law. But those
 ambiguities do not relieve the university of its moral responsibility. They sharpen it.



 Conclusion
 The aftermath of October 7, 2023, did not merely test university speech policies. It tested
 the moral foundations of the institutions themselves. While armed terrorists targeted
 Israeli civilians, faculty debated settler-colonial theory. Student groups held teach-ins,
 issued letters, and organized protests that, in some cases, praised “resistance by any
 means necessary.”206 Others blamed Israel entirely for the violence, as 33 Harvard student
 groups did in a now-infamous letter issued before the bodies were buried.207 At Columbia,
 organizers of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” distanced themselves from praise for
 Hamas—but only after affiliated groups circulated literature celebrating the attacks.208

 Meanwhile, many university leaders issued statements so equivocal that they failed even
 to name the atrocity.209 Indeed, as Miriam Elman observed, many university administrators
 offered statements so inadequate and morally ambiguous that they effectively equated
 Hamas’s atrocities with Israel’s self-defense, reflecting a profound institutional failure to
 provide moral clarity and leadership in a moment of crisis.210

    This paper has traced how that happened. Part I showed how definitional ambiguity—
    particularly around antisemitism and anti-Zionism—has enabled institutions to treat anti-
    Jewish animus as a matter of viewpoint diversity. Competing definitions like the IHRA,
    Nexus, and JDA frameworks are not merely academic abstractions; they shape what harm
    is recognized and which responses are considered legitimate.213 Part II offered narrative
    evidence: testimony from Israel, firsthand accounts of university silence, and the moral
    dissonance experienced by faculty and students alike. Part III offered a path forward,
    grounded in institutional integrity, virtue ethics, and legal realism—not as a rejection of
    liberal values, but as their recovery.

    Some will ask: What more do you want universities to do? Should they punish speech?
    Ban student groups? Cancel controversial lectures? The answer is: No. This is not a call for
    censorship. It is a call for leadership. When a student group calls for the abolition of Jewish
    self-determination, the appropriate institutional response is not silence, but speech. When
    faculty distribute material defending mass murder, the university’s role is not to protect their
    tenure with procedural abstractions, but to clarify what tenure stands for.

    Institutions cannot remain neutral in the face of ideologies that reject the very values those
    institutions are built to protect. Robert George and Cornel West put it clearly: disagreement
    is not a threat to liberal education—but disengagement is.214 Leon Kass reminds us that
    education must form not just minds, but character: “To be free is not to be neutral. It is to
    be good.”215

    This is not a call to abandon freedom. It is a call to practice it. To recognize that liberty
    requires structure, that inquiry requires clarity, and that moral seriousness is not an obstacle
    to the university’s mission but its fulfillment.

    In moments of crisis, moral leadership demands clarity, courage, and unequivocal
    condemnation of evil. As the Academic Engagement Network emphasized in its statement
    shortly after October 7, university leaders have an obligation to explicitly condemn
    atrocities, to reject false equivalencies between acts of terrorism and legitimate self-
    defense, and to reaffirm that some actions are beyond political debate and simply wrong.216

    The question, for university leaders, is not “What are we allowed to say?” The question
    should be, “What kind of institution are we becoming?” That is not a rhetorical question. It
    is the beginning of institutional virtue. It is time demand that universities cultivate the habit
    of acting rightly, in the right moment, for the right reason.217
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