On April 20, I attended a meeting with Stuart Gabriel, distinguished professor of the UCLA Anderson School of Management and chair of UCLA’s Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. I found the Initiative’s approach lacked nuance, sidelined critical scholarship and risked not only undermining its stated goals but legitimizing repression on our campus.

Antisemitism – discrimination, violence and dehumanization directed at Jewish people because they are Jewish – is dangerous. But when institutions adopt frameworks that conflate discrimination with the expression of political beliefs, they make it more difficult to challenge antisemitism.

Gabriel described antisemitism as an ancient hatred and the defining form of bigotry today. This casts antisemitism as eternal and exceptional rather than historically specific and structural. Describing antisemitism as unique and forever offers no real pathway toward helping us understand what antisemitism is, how it operates and what to do about it, save for erecting an ever taller barricade between Jewish people and the rest of the world.

More concerning was the Initiative’s inability to grapple with the relationship between antisemitism and political conflict in Israel and Palestine. While Gabriel insisted the report is not about Israel, the definitions it relies on say otherwise.

The Initiative draws heavily on frameworks that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, which has been criticized, even by its primary author, for its use in policing speech.

This puts the University in the position of determining what is valid political expression and what is not. When the antisemitism report defines Zionism as the movement for Jewish self-determination, it means opposition to Zionism can only be understood as opposition to Jewish self-determination.

This, however, excludes a viewpoint like mine, which opposes Zionism not because it calls for Jewish self-determination but because it has resulted in the dispossession and death of Palestinian people. Those who identify as anti-Zionists – whether for political, ethical or religious reasons – and advocate for Palestinian rights are told our viewpoints are unacceptable, even when we are Jewish.

Similar approaches have been used to justify disciplinary measures, restrict protest, chill academic speech and detain activists. At UCLA, administrative responses to campus protests have escalated into policing and physical violence. Advancing an instrumentalized definition of antisemitism here is not merely analytically flawed – it is dangerous. At a moment when attacks on universities have been justified through invocations of antisemitism, the Initiative reinforces a political culture hostile to dissent and corrosive of democratic institutions and civil liberties.

In my opinion, the intolerance of dissent was palpable in the meeting. Despite being framed as an opportunity to offer feedback, there was minimal room for dialogue.

Questions about academic freedom and the political uses of antisemitism were dismissed. When I raised concerns related to the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, Gabriel reiterated the report is only about eradicating hate on our campus, cloaking the report’s assumptions in benign language.

The broader institutional context is also troubling. UCLA is home to leading scholars of antisemitism who approach the subject with rigor, but they are not involved in the Initiative.

Additionally, the co-chairs of the separate Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Racism, which has published three reports documenting discrimination on our campus, allege unequal treatment from the university. Separating and elevating antisemitism above other forms of discrimination does not help us see how antisemitism intersects with other forms of oppression – it fosters a hierarchy of harm that weakens our ability to create a culture of mutual safety.

There is a better path forward. Addressing antisemitism should draw on the strengths of a research university: rigorous scholarship, open debate and a willingness to confront complexity.

UCLA can lead in this area, but it must rethink the Initiative to Combat Antisemitism and move beyond reductive frameworks. This requires centering scholarship on antisemitism in its historical and comparative dimensions, clearly distinguishing between discrimination against Jews and criticism of political ideologies and defending academic freedom.

Antisemitism must be confronted, but when the frameworks used are instrumentalized in service of repression, they do more harm than good.

Benjamin Kersten is a seventh-year doctoral student in art history.