The 'Centrality of Zionism to Jewish Identity'
Nick King
20 January 2026
On 5 January 2026, Michel DeGraff, a fellow of the Linguistics Society of America and professor of linguistics and education lecturing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), succeeded in having dismissed by the District Court for Massachusetts a civil legal action citing his involvement in antisemitic intimidation of a student and faculty member.
Along with the doctoral student and an Israeli professor at MIT as claimants, the Brandeis Center in June 2025 had filed the lawsuit against Professor DeGraff and the MIT. In the filing, multiple occurrences of 'severe antisemitism' and harassment were claimed, with Jewish members of the MIT community allegedly defamed and 'terrorised'. The suit maintained that the University attempted no disciplinary action, "standing idly by as faculty and students cultivated an environment rife with antisemitism and fear", and permitting the Institute to become "a breeding ground for hatred."
The Brandeis Center - fully, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law - was established in 2012 to further the civil and human rights of Jewish people. The organisation is particularly active on campuses across the United States, committed to a fight 'against antisemitism and anti-Zionism'. It has a track record of taking up complaints on behalf of aggrieved Jewish students and faculty, with prior actions having litigated against Harvard, Yale and Stanford Universities as well as movements advocating for academic boycott.
Paul Eckles, the Brandeis Center’s senior litigation counsel, commented that, although universities were swift to counter 'Jew-hatred of the far-right', they were rather reluctant "to see antisemitism when it’s tied up with what’s going on in the Middle East. They are not used to recognizing the type of antisemitism they’re seeing and are just frankly in denial about what’s occurring and its seriousness.” He added: "that’s something that we’re seeing on a number of campuses and are hoping to change." †
Every Accusation a Confession
Professor DeGraff had in early 2024 proposed to teach at MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy a course on language, linguistics and decolonization in Israel/Palestine. The proposal was not formally taken up by the Department, but he subsequently presented course material as an accredited speaker-series analysing the role of language and linguistics in liberation struggles in Haiti, Israel and Palestine.
Throughout this period American campuses were energised by Palestine solidarity actions and fractious debate around Israeli military intervention in the Gaza Strip. Writing in an article for Middle East Eye *, Professor DeGraff noted:
"In the wake of Hamas's 7 October attack and the launch of Israel's genocide in Gaza, the Louis D Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published an open letter urging nearly 200 university presidents to investigate Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for alleged violations of federal 'material support for terrorism' laws.
The letter was part of a wider campaign to criminalise peaceful anti-genocide activism and pressure universities to take disciplinary action against campus organisers."
The article proceeds to delineate interacting psychological and linguistic tropes that profile how Zionist dissemblance insinuates its manufactured arrogation into attempts to restrict permitted speech on Palestine solidarity. Inversion of the role of victim and perpetrator pervades throughout, with prevailing traits summarised as follows:
▶ "mental viruses" - use of myth, propaganda or pernicious narrative, by-passing rational evaluation, that spread like a virus ...
▶ "mind infection" - ... to mobilise and to legitimate an antagonistic consensus against a target grouping;
▶ "cognitive dissonance" - use of mythical histories of victimisation that transform peaceful neighbours into mortal enemies, with violence used to resolve the resulting psychological incongruities in the ...
▶ ... irreducible "hate-narratives" employed;
▶ "mirror accusations" for "reality-bending" - to project one's own guilt and violence on to the victim to justify repression (cf the linguistic misrepresentation in accusations of Palestine solidarity as 'hate-speech'), revealing every accusation as a confession;
▶ "Literal", "interpretive" and "implicatory denial", where:
- Interpretive denial relies on euphemism (e.g. expulsions become population transfers, torture reframed as moderate physical pressure ...);
- Implicatory denial insists on self-righteousness to shift moral responsibility on to the victim (e.g. the killing of civilians as counter-terror measures while refuting a genocidal motive ...).
Shortly after the filing of Brandeis' lawsuit, in July 2025 the New York Post quoted Professor DeGraff as commenting: "One of the goals of Hasbara and the distortions therein is to distract from the horrors in Gaza and the West Bank ... So let’s keep centering what Amnesty International calls 'a live-streamed genocide.'" ‡ Recognizable horrors perhaps that Eckles would want academic administrators to frame as 'live-streamed antisemitism'.
Common theme, special treatment
On re-assuming office in the White House in 2025, Donald Trump returned with a threat that universities could lose accreditation and federal support if they failed to address claims of antisemitism. The litigation the Brandeis Center initiated against Harvard in May 2024 (under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act 1964) centred around allegations of 'pervasive antisemitism' on campus and institutional failure to act to prevent it. The action was settled out of court, with the University agreeing to introduce the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and an annual reporting regime to monitor for discrimination or harassment based on national origin.
A Brandeis Center’s press release referring to the IHRA document declared that it recognises "the centrality of Zionism to Jewish identity, and explicitly [states] that targeting Jews and Zionists constitutes a violation of school rules." Founder of the Brandeis Center, Ken Marcus, believed it "critical":
"We routinely hear from ill-informed university administrators that they make a strong distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The fact is that rules against Zionists are rules against Jews ... "
Much effort has been expended throughout Western liberal democracies over the past decade-and-a-half by pro-Israeli lobbyists on a campaign to have the IHRA definition incorporated into national legislatures, or at least employed as an authoritative benchmark for the regulatory supervision of public administration. Much criticism in response has emphasised the highly-controversial definition's incompatibility with fundamental freedoms of expression as well as the impact on the professional integrity of those subject to its remit. Its originator, Kenneth Stern, has disowned the current working document specifically for its lack of objectivity and inherent conflation of antisemitic statement with arms-length critique of the state of Israel. In October 2022, Professor of Law at Stanford University E. Tendayi Achiume, then UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, highlighted its unsuitability as a reference authority 'owing to its susceptibility to being politically instrumentalised and the harm done to human rights resulting from such instrumentalisation.'
Legitimising exclusion
Until 2020, few universities had taken up the IHRA definition in the United Kingdom. Professor David Feldman, Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, London, labelled it as “bewilderingly imprecise” and a dangerous "tool to stifle free speech" that added nothing otherwise available under existing equality law. The riposte of its advocates - amongst whom was Lord Mann, the Government's independent adviser on antisemitism - was that it extended the catchment of the charge: "the whole point of it is that it falls below the criminal threshold". In the wake of the ensuing threat of the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, to curtail funding to institutions reluctant to follow through on the Government's backing for its adoption, 75% of universities implemented the policy.
Major concerns attach to the IHRA yardstick's capacity to suppress lawful discourse on Palestinian human rights in order to avoid 'antisemitic' criticism of the Israeli state. Such tensions can take the form of event cancellations or restrictions, false allegations leading to disciplinary proceedings against students and/or staff, and reputations impugned or careers damaged through the stigma of protracted periods of investigation.
Graphic from Index of Repression - Database of systematic repression of Palestinian solidarity
A report generated in May 2023 covering some 56 higher education establishments by the Government's Taskforce on Antisemitism in Higher Education (a creation of the same Lord Mann) claimed to uncover not a single example of a chilling effect on academic research or freedom of speech as a result of the IHRA definition. Shortly after, these immaculate findings were universally contradicted in a study published by the European Law Support Centre into forty cases reported directly to it between 2017 and 2022. It found that the imposition of IHRA criteria: ȸ
- stifles free speech within the law in relation to teaching, research and discussion of the nature of the Israeli state;
- stifles likewise in relation to the nature of Zionism as an ideology;
- unfairly damages reputations of staff and students concerned with Palestinian human rights and crimes committed by Israel;
- erases the experiences of Palestinian communities, concealing evidence of injustices committed against them;
- inhibits higher education institutions in contributing to informed public debate.
It emerged from the analysis that the definition's widespread adoption is causing extensive problems to research and teaching of Middle East studies and is simply inappropriate for use in an academic environment. With the IHRA blueprint also materialising more widely across the regulated professions, Professor Achiume's warning of the damage from political instrumentalisation resonates: the 'whole point of it' is to kick in where existing adequate protection under the law does not aid promotion of a disingenuous ideological gambit.
Judicial Review . . .
Although often employed as voluntary guidance, equal, if not greater, concern lies with the potential reach of its practical misuse as a tool to intimidate participation in - or even expressions of support for - Palestine solidarity. A case in point is the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), where in October 2025 the Secretary of State for Health ordered NHS England's non-statutory adoption of the definition. The Right to Protest group instructed solicitors Imran Kahn in December 2025 to apply for a judicial review of the Government's implementation of the order, citing inadequate consideration of its wider professional and social impact and illegitimate interference with lawful public expression.
At the time of writing, there is a stream of disciplinary actions in progress having been launched by the UK healthcare sector regulatory authority, the General Medical Council, under pressure from pro-Israeli lobby organisations. Their common speciality resides in targeting practitioners solely for statements made via personal social media accounts. In response, a crowdfunder to Defend Free Speech has backed the Right to Protest action contesting the NHS' exploitation of the IHRA tract. Parallel proceedings are also in motion, initiated by Health Workers 4 Palestine (a grassroots organization who advocate for health workers in Palestine), to challenge NHS England's decision to adopt the tendentious definition and to pursue problematic interferences within the health service relating to Palestine advocacy.
† ‘Severe, pervasive’ Jew-hatred at MIT, per lawsuit (25 June 2025)
[https://www.jns.org/severe-pervasive-jew-hatred-at-mit-per-lawsuit/]
* I teach linguistics at MIT. Here's how a pro-Israel lawsuit uses language to silence critics (19 January 2026)
[https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/teach-linguistics-mit-zionist-lawsuit-shows-language-silence-israel-critics].
‡ MIT prof accused of harassing Jewish student over Zionist ‘mind infection’ claim revealed, still listed on staff - New York Post (2 July 2025) [https://nypost.com/2025/07/02/us-news/mit-prof-accused-of-harassing-jewish-student-over-mind-infection-claim-revealed/]
ȸ European Law Support Centre & British Society for Middle Eastern Studies - The Adverse Impact of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism (September 2023) [https://elsc.support/resource/academic-freedom-and-freedom-of-speech-in-uk-higher-education-the-adverse-impact-of-the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism/]