Defining antisemitism down: The EUMC working definition and its disavowal by the university & college union

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Hirsh, David. 2012. Defining antisemitism down: The EUMC working definition and its disavowal by the university & college union. Fathom, 1(1), pp. 30-39. [Article]

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Abstract or Description

What kinds of hostility to Israel may be understood as, or may lead to, or may be caused by, antisemitism? One of the ways this relationship is debated, or otherwise contested, is through disputes over how to define antisemitism. In this article I shed some light on the struggles over definition by tracing a brief genealogy of the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism. I go on to look at a case study of the definition’s disavowal during the 2011 debate within the University and College Union (UCU) in Britain and also the mobilisation of the Equality Act (2010) as an alternative definition of antisemitism by a member of the UCU who is alleging in court that the union has an unaddressed problem of institutional antisemitism.

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