Monday’s edition of Amanpour & Co., which airs on PBS and CNN International, was hosted by regular show fill-in Bianna Golodryga, who is probably even more bluntly liberal than the formidable Christiane Amanpour herself.
The opener teased the upcoming interview with Kenneth Stern, self-styled anti-semitism expert at the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, with his hostile thoughts on the Trump administration’s attempt to protect Jewish students on college campuses via cutting off funding to schools that refuse to clamp down on pro-Hamas hatred.
KENNETH STERN, DIRECTOR, BARD CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF HATE: It's giving an easy solution to a complicated problem.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Human rights advocate Kenneth Stern tells Michel Martin why he's concerned that his own definition of anti-Semitism is being used to stop speech.
The producers must have thought they had an intellectual “gotcha” on their hands -- the poster boy for defining anti-semitism leaping off the poster to condemn those who want to protect Jewish students from harassment on left-wing college campuses.
GOLODRYGA: Our next guest helped draft the working definition of anti-Semitism used by multiple governments and universities worldwide. Director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, Kenneth Stern, is now worried that the definition he helped create is being weaponized. He joins Michel Martin to explain why it's causing harm to everyone, including Jewish students.
There is nothing new in Stern's spiel. He was complaining about "weaponizing" anti-Semitism in 2019.
Stern talked to regular Amanpour interviewer (and NPR host) Michel Martin, beginning by explaining how Stern’s “working definition of anti-Semitism” came about, then fretting about its weaponization on behalf of Jewish college students being harassed by pro-Hamas protesters.
Stern has described himself as a Zionist and "supporter of Israel," and National Public Radio, for one, accepted that definition, though Stern is certainly eager to condemn Trump's actions to protect Jewish students, while using exaggerated metaphors to defend the pro-Hamas haters on campus.
MARTIN: So, in fact, we spoke a, about a year ago, your concern then was that mainstream Jewish groups were putting more and more pressure on lawmakers to adopt the IHRA definition as well, and that you were worried that it would be weaponized for the purpose of suppressing free speech. So, what do you think now?
Stern responded by cranking his liberal-historian-worthy invective up to 11. "McCarthyism" figured into the mix, of course.
STERN: …we're at a moment where I'm really worried about the levels of anti- Semitism when we're targeting people that are seen as not part of our social contract, whether it's immigrant or Muslims or transgender folks, because if you look at how anti-Semitism works, that is the environment in which it grows, when people fear somebody else among us and leaders can make that a problem.
The other thing that troubles me too, and this is new since the, you know, change in administrations and I see the wholesale attack on higher education and on legal profession, if you have the wrong side and all this. I look back at Jewish history, and it's the times where democracy was under threat. The times of the Palmer raids, the time of the McCarthy era, where Jewish security was the most at risk, and I'm worried that we're entering another one of those periods now.
Demonstrating an Amanpour pattern, the liberal journalist Martin asked a single question that mildly challenged her even further left guest. PBS’s idea of balance?
MARTIN: ....some people would just say, look, some of these demonstrations really were anti-Semitic, things were said that created an environment of fear among Jewish students, in particular Jewish people who happen to be in that environment. And so, some people might look at that and say, well, why wouldn't you employ a definition as a kind of a yardstick for behavior that is to be tolerated and behavior that is not?
Stern responded with a half-hearted admission that the left on campus can be intolerant of dissent (policing “micro-aggressions,” for example).
Martin brought up the well-publicized cases of two foreign-born graduate students, Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, and the Tufts graduate student who “was sort of detained on the street. Some people thought it was kidnapping….”
Martin concluded with a wellness check for Stern, who is presumably guilt-ridden about the part he is unwittingly playing in Trump's attempt to protect Jews from harassment on campus.
MARTIN: So, before we let you go, how are you doing? I mean, as a person who's been expressing concerns like this for some time now. How are you?
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
Amanpour & Co.
4/14/25
1:38:19 a.m. (ET)
GOLODRYGA: Our next guest helped draft the working definition of anti-Semitism used by multiple governments and universities worldwide. Director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, Kenneth Stern, is now worried that the definition he helped create is being weaponized. He joins Michel Martin to explain why it's causing harm to everyone, including Jewish students.
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Kenneth Stern, thank you so much for speaking with us once again.
KENNETH STERN, DIRECTOR, BARD CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF HATE: Thank you so much for having me again.
MARTIN: So, just to remind people, you were the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance or IHRA. It's the working definition of anti-Semitism. So, just to remind people, what was the idea behind drafting this document and what does this working definition say?
STERN: It was actually drafted in 2004, IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, adopted the text in 2016, but it was drafted at a time where there was a -- the second intifada and an uptick in attacks on Jews in Europe and there was a group that was tasked with putting out reports about anti-Semitism, but they said, look, we have a problem. We have all these different data points across Europe, and there's no common sort of score sheet of what people should be looking at. We need a common definition.
And then they said that anti-Semitism, in their view, is a series of stereotypes about Jews. But then there was a problem too. They basically said, look, we have -- you know, what do we do if a Jew is attacked as a stand-in for an Israeli? And they said, well, you know, we have a -- if the person is being attacked because the person has these stereotypes about Jews, applies them to Israelis and reapplies them to the person walking on the streets of London or France, that's anti-Semitism. But not if they're upset at Israeli policy. And I thought that was, you know, sort of nuts.And the work -- we worked with the director of EUMC, I was the lead drafter, but it was never designed to say that you say something that violates the definition, we're going to classify you as an anti-Semite, and that's the problem of how it's being used as a way to stop speech as opposed to just take the temperature or give clarity on what's a hate crime and what isn't.
MARTIN: So, in fact, we spoke a, a, a about a year ago, your concern then was that mainstream Jewish groups were putting more and more pressure on lawmakers to adopt the IHRA definition as well, and that you were worried that it would be weaponized for the purpose of suppressing free speech. So, what do you think now?
STERN: Sure. And you know, it predates the current moment. I mean, I started writing about this in 2010 and 2011, and I wrote a book about this in 2020. So, it, it's not new. But what I see is the -- you know, using it as a way to suggest what funding goes to programs, what speakers should come to campus.
What worries me more about somebody who's spent decades dealing with hate and anti-Semitism is that it's giving an easy solution to a complicated problem, saying, take this definition, use it, put something on one side of a ledger or another, and that's how we should think about anti-Semitism, when we're at a moment where I'm really worried about the levels of anti- Semitism when we're targeting people that are seen as not part of our social contract, whether it's immigrant or Muslims or transgender folks, because if you look at how anti-Semitism works, that is the environment in which it grows, when people fear somebody else among us and leaders can make that a problem. The other thing that troubles me too, and this is new since the, you know, change in administrations and I see the wholesale attack on higher education and on legal profession, if you have the wrong side and all this. I look back at Jewish history, and it's the times where democracy was under threat. The times of the Palmer raids, the time of the McCarthy era, where Jewish security was the most at risk, and I'm worried that we're entering another one of those periods now.
MARTIN: You know, we can debate about the degree to which some of these demonstrations that took place mainly last spring, you know, how appropriate they were. But some people would just say, look, some of these demonstrations really were anti-Semitic, things were said that created an environment of fear among Jewish students, in particular Jewish people who happen to be in that environment.
And so, some people might look at that and say, well, why wouldn't you employ a definition as a kind of a yardstick for behavior that is to be tolerated in behavior that is not.
STERN: You know, one of the things is that the fundamental distinction is being lost here, which is that no student should be harassed or intimidated or bullied or threatened, let alone assaulted, but students on a campus, for a campus to work well, students have to expect that they're going to hear things, that are going to disturb them to their core, and universities have a responsibility of how do we teach out of this moment? How do we support students and so forth? Not to say there are things that are not going to be heard. I think part of the problem on the campus at the moment also comes from the left with ideas about, oh, you have to be safe intellectually. There are things like, you know, microaggressions. Nobody should go and harm somebody, you know, intentionally and so forth, and be aware of what they're saying. But the idea that somehow, we're going to monitor speech means that, you know, there are certain ideas that are OK and certain ideas that are not OK. It's going to prioritize group think, and that undercuts, you know, a campus education.
One of the other challenges here too is that there's -- you know, we're forgetting that there are Jewish students on both sides of this. If you look, Jewish Voice for Peace was the group that went to the, you know, Trump Tower. So, there's, you know, a debate inside the Jewish community too, about what it means to be Jewish and whether you have a particular attitude on Israel. I'm a Zionist. Israel is important to me, but for a lot of Jewish students, young Jewish students, the idea is that their Judaism leads them to an anti-Zionist position. And a case that's really instructive is what happened in Germany when the IHRA definition was used to basically classify
Jews who were opposing the war on Gaza, calling them anti-Semitic. And one of the things that a person commenting on it said, isn't it ironic that Germany has again decided what it means to be Jewish, what it means to have, you know, a Jewish position?
And I don't want Congress deciding that here either. And I don't want administrations deciding that. I want them to be able to get students to be engaged about differences about this issue. It's a great topic to talk about how do we deal with differences. If we look at the history of the universities, when we try to say certain speech, it makes people uncomfortable, and that we're going to outlaw that speech, it's going to backfire and it harms the people that it's trying to protect.
MARTIN: As we are speaking now, the administration has investigated dozens of universities, including Columbia, Penn, and Brown, for the use of DEI initiatives and also for what they claim is their failure to protect Jewish students, faculty and staff from anti-Semitism on campus. So, their failure to allegedly confront anti-Semitism on campus. And they are -- the terms put forth have been very clear, either comply with very specific directions, in some case putting departments, hold departments under receivership or lose huge amounts of funding.
I mean, the administration froze over a billion dollars in federal funding to Cornell, nearly $800 million to Northwestern. They threatened Columbia with a loss of $400 million in funding. The irony being that there are a lot of Jewish students and faculty and researchers on many of these campuses.
And so, when you look at that, like what do you -- what -- do you think it's really about anti-Semitism or what do you think it's about?
STERN: Well, I think it's actually has a much larger agenda that we've seen actually even before October 7th. There's a view of attacking liberal education and seeing it as the enemy. And I think J. D. Vance had talked about things like that, about -- I think it was after October 7th, but basically saying, we should, you know, follow the model of Orban and Hungary, is closed down universities. So, I see it as a broader attack.
You know, and one of the things when I testified in front of the Senate one committee a couple of weeks ago, another one back in September. And back in September, I think most of us, even the Republican witnesses, if my recollection is correct, all agreed that one of the challenges at the moment is that the Office of Civil Rights is underfunded, it's backlogged, there are cases about anti-Semitism, and we all thought that that more funding needed to go to that, to resolve those cases. Because when they're not resolved, it tells people, people don't care.
And there are some cases that are -- you know, are credible and should go through the system. You know, now they're going claw backs, without the process, without due process. And what I really worry about the larger moment is that we're an existential crisis for universities. And I get it that universities have tough decisions to make. They have a lot of pressure and political pressure and financial pressure. This may not be the only thing that's coming down that's going to threaten them, but, you know, I think about Benjamin Franklin, if we don't, you know, hang together, we're going to hang separately.
Columbia has a $14 to $15 billion endowment. Harvard has a big endowment. I don't always agree with Larry Summers, but he's right when he is saying, you know, what the heck is your endowment for? You know, to fight things like this. So, I think there needs to be an organized pushback and to focus on the real threat against higher education, which is going to affect Jewish students too, as you say, and not just say, oh, we're really happy that we're deporting somebody, or threatening funding for somebody that says something we don't like.
MARTIN: There have been two very high-profile cases, graduate students in both cases, who were arrested summarily, they're surprised. One was -- this was Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia student. He is a -- holds a green card. He's a legal permanent resident. He's married to an American citizen who is pregnant. And then, in the other case is this Tufts graduate student from Turkey who was on her way to a Ramadan breakfast dinner with friends to -- and was sort of detained on the street. Some people thought it was kidnapping. They didn't know what was going on.
And in Khalil's case, he was a very -- he was high-profile and says that people remember those demonstrations at Columbia last spring, some of which became quite raucous. And he was a person who was sort of a spokesperson trying to articulate what the students' concerns were.
In the case of this young woman, Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts graduate student, it seems to be that she had co-signed an op-ed criticizing Israel's war in Gaza. And so, it seems that, because there hasn't been any other evidence presented, that the reason she was picked up was that this op-ed. And you know, the argument the administration has made is that, you know, we don't invite you here to tear up our campuses, we invite you here to study. And if you're going to be causing ruckus, then, you know, you need to go. So, say more about why you think that's concerning.
STERN: Sure. Well, you know, Khalil's case, I mean, you know, he was one of the people that didn't wear a mask, he was obviously very public. They didn't charge him with crime or anything. And one of the concerns me even more is -- as you talk about the Tuft student who signed op-ed. I just saw a thing from the Student Journalism Association that basically is warning people who are writing in student newspapers to go back and scrub out identities of people that you wrote about.
You know, to talk about using anonymous sources. And they're worried about, you know, journalism is supposed to be also produced an archive for people to go back to, but they see that as a danger now. At Columbia, they were -- at the journalism school, a professor said, and I think perfectly reasonably, and a horribly -- you know, a horrible thing to say, don't write about Gaza, don't write about Ukraine. We can't protect you.
And what worries me about all this too is one of the things I've done in teaching is that I've mentored students and had programs with students and taught students who are foreign students who come here, and one of the reasons that they come here to study is our tradition for free speech. More than one have told me that, gee, I really want to learn about your free speech tradition so I can go back to my country where we don't have that protection and try to get people to think about the value of an open marketing place of ideas, to debate about ideas and not to have the state suppress it.
But we're acting much more like those countries, like Russia and Iran at the moment, than we're acting like the United States of America that I think, you know, we all know and love and hope we can get back to.
MARTIN: Is a concern here that this really has become about speech and not conduct?
STERN: Yes, yes. I mean, there's no -- listen. If somebody said, I assaulted somebody, you know, that's a different thing. If somebody says, you know, you fundraise for Hezbollah or Hamas even held a bake sale, that would be something else, that would be material support for terrorism. The administration's been very clear that this is about speech.
And again, to, you know, your point, of what I testified about, I'm just -- you know, the -- I'm sort of blown away by the idea that somebody saying something that I find totally disagreeable is somehow a threat to our national security and foreign policy. Are we that weak as a country that we can't tolerate kids on campus saying something? I mean, again, it's different than harassing, intimidating, bullying, threatening all those things, but to say something, which is the premise of -- apparently of a lot of the actions of the administration and the legislation that's, you know, being promoted, that to me is very scary.
MARTIN: So, before we let you go, how are you doing? I mean, as a person who's been expressing concerns like this for some time now. How are you?
STERN: I'm deeply concerned about what this means for the university with this full-scale assault on higher education, with the claw backs of money, the threats, the bullying, the -- as you talked about, the receivership. There was just an article about maybe having a consent decree with Columbia to enforce -- you know, with a judge enforcing whatever resolution, you know, that becomes your handing over the university to politicians. And that deeply worries me because, you know, the higher educational system is one of the things that's best about America.
We produce students that can think, that have spaces where they could be wrong and learn how to be critical thinkers. And what we're doing isexactly what, you know, we've seen on some of the other side on -- from the progressive side from time to time is saying, no, there's only one right way of looking at this. But when you have the state doing it and threatening significant financial penalties, that should scare us all.
MARTIN: Professor Kenneth Stern, thank you so much for speaking with us.
STERN: Thank you so much for having me.
