This special episode features Lana Tatour, Barry Trachtenberg, Meira Gold, and Noa Greenberg. They discuss how IHRA functions as a tool of Zionist repression, whether IHRA’s use is acknowledged or it is quietly adopted. They conclude that the fight against IHRA is ultimately a fight against racism and colonialism.

Resources:

Coalition to End Zionist Repression

Lana Tatour, “Censoring Palestine: human rights, academic freedom and the IHRA”

Muhannad Ayyash, “The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism is an orientalist text”

Harsha Walia, “Colonialism, racism and the IHRA”

Speakers bios:

Lana Tatour is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social at the University of New South Wales. Her co-edited book, Race and the Question of Palestine, is forthcoming with Stanford University Press in 2025.

Barry Trachtenberg holds the Rubin Presidential Chair in Jewish History at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. A historian of modern Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Jewish nationalism, he is the author of three books, most recently The Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish (2022) and The United States and the Nazi Holocaust: Race, Refuge, and Remembrance (2018). He has published on issues related to American support for Israel, Zionism, Anti-zionism, and Antisemitism in venues such as Jewish Currents, the Forward, Electronic Intifada, and Mondoweiss. In 2017, he testified to the US Congress on the topic of antisemitism on college and university classrooms. In 2023, he submitted with colleagues expert testimony on a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and in 2024 testified in the trial DCI-Palestine v. Biden seeking an emergency injunction to stop military and diplomatic support for Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Boards of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. For more information see https://wfu.academia.edu/BarryTrachtenberg.

Meira Gold is historian of science, archaeology, race, and empire currently based in NYC. She has held teaching and research positions at NYU, York University, the European University Institute, and the University of Cambridge. She is a proud anti-Zionist Jew and an organizing member of NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

Noa Greenberg is a member of CUNY for Palestine as well as Not In Our Name CUNY. They have been organizing around Palestine at CUNY for nearly 3 years. They are currently an undergraduate student at CUNY studying political science in the hopes of pursuing law later on.