Lawmakers want to target antisemitism at KY universities. Opponents say it’ll stifle debate
Jewish and Palestinian students in Kentucky are saying a GOP-sponsored resolution ostensibly aimed at combating antisemitism on public college and universities campuses is instead a tool to “silence” criticism of Israel and suppress protests against the war in Gaza.
Senate Joint Resolution 55 from Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, would direct the governing board of all public colleges and universities in Kentucky to “adopt policies to combat antisemitism” through June 30, 2028.
Tichenor, a member of the legislative Kentucky-Israel Caucus, told the House Standing Committee on Postsecondary Education Tuesday that “a rise of antisemitism” on college campuses followed the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which in turn ignited an Israeli attack on Gaza that has since killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The committee advanced the resolution along party lines. It now heads to the full House for a vote.
Tichenor’s resolution would set requirements for implementing these policies, including that Jewish students “be made aware of resources available to them” at community resources centers, and mandate colleges and universities collect data on “antisemitism on their campuses” and report that information to the Council on Postsecondary Education.
But two college students and and a Jewish community member said Tuesday that Tichenor’s resolution is masquerading as a tool to combat antisemitism when really it’s part of a larger “nationwide crackdown on Palestine solidarity and anti-racist discourse.”
“If your goal is to keep Jewish Kentuckians safe on college campuses — an honorable goal — this bill is not the answer,” Siera Hanks, who is Jewish, said Tuesday.
And Richard Cabanas, a University of Louisville student with the group Louisville for Palestine, said the resolution “deliberately conflates Judaism and Zionism, identity and ideology — two entirely different things — which creates the space for actual antisemitism to grow, while throwing our First Amendment rights away.”
This resolution is winding its way through the Kentucky General Assembly as friction between the two sides intensifies nationally.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump ordered federal immigration authorities to arrest and possibly deport Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who helped organize protests against Israel at Columbia University in New York City.
Trump warned Monday that Khalil’s arrest will be the “first of many.”
The day before Khalil’s arrest, on Friday, the Trump Administration’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced it would cancel $400 million in federal grants to the Ivy League school.
Trump has proposed moving all Palestinians out of Gaza as a way to solve the ongoing conflict, posting on social media earlier this year an AI-generated video showing “Trump Gaza.”
‘Fundamental misattribution of harm’
Reported incidents of antisemitism saw a tenfold increase between 2015 and Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Anti-defamation League, and another 400% in reported incidents since then, Louisville Democratic Rep. Daniel Grossberg, who is Jewish, told the committee.
“If those numbers sound staggering, they should be,” he said, urging them to pass the resolution.
The Kentucky Jewish Council reported more than 50 incidents last year of antisemitism on campus, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, chairman of that council, told the committee those incidents included “threats of violence, vandalism, threats against Jewish students, keeping Jewish students from being able to utilize the campus.”
In an effort to thwart those incidents, the resolution would mandate post-secondary institutions to “defund and disband any student organizations that have been found to provide material support and resources to known terrorist organizations and report them to the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” Tichenor said.
Grossberg said the point of the resolution is not to “squash free speech,” or prevent students and staff “from expressing criticism of Israel or its policies. It does however prevent them from targeting Jewish students with fear and hatred.”
“This resolution protects Jewish students,” Litvin insisted.
But not all Jewish students feel protected by this resolution, Hanks told committee members.
Part of the criticism against the resolution, she explained, is of the proposed adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of antisemitism,” which Louisville for Palestine and dozens of other groups argue has been used in practice to incorrectly label criticism of Israel and its actions as antisemitic, in effect chilling or suppressing non-violent protests, activism and speech critical of Zionism.
“Civil rights groups have long criticized the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a tool to smear and suppress those who speak out in support of Palestinian human rights,” University of Kentucky student Logan Robertson added.
“The IHRA goes so far as to explicitly provide examples of what is classified as ‘antisemitism,’ among these are claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist endeavor,” said Robertson, who is president of UK’s Students for Justice in Palestine.
Hanks said Tichenor’s resolution “justifies itself by citing data that antisemitism has risen precipitously. This data comes from a report created by the Combating Antisemitism Movement, (which) states explicitly that one of their main goals is to further the adoption of the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism.”
Hanks said such definitions — and codifying them in Kentucky law — “weaponizes” actual antisemitism, “an old and pernicious form of violent xenophobia, (that) we will not address through this fundamental misattribution of harm. I fear for the ways this bill can be used to sanction and harm students and educators who are speaking out on profound abuses by a country that our country materially supports and arms.”
“To silence criticism of the Israeli state does not make Jewish students safer,” she added. “If your goal is to undergird suppressive legal claims against post-secondary students and academics studying Palestinian, Israeli and Jewish histories, and organizing in opposition to occupation and war crimes perpetrated by the current state of Israel, then I ask that you say that, and stop claiming that this is for our protection.”
Resolution is ‘tone deaf’
Democrats on the committee voted against the measure.
“In an effort to keep students safe, it feels like we’re trying to pull together a very specific group of students who, while there are definitely incidents I don’t condone, it feels tone deaf to what is happening to so many other groups of students: our Muslim students, our LGBTQ students, Black students,” Rep. Sarah Stalker, D-Louisville, said.
“I’m just not sure this is the right resolution that needs to be put forth,” she added, particularly when Republicans are simultaneously trying to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Kentucky’s public colleges and universities.
Tichenor implied the surge in antisemitism was a symptom that DEI doesn’t work.
“Where was DEI when antisemitism was so prominent on our campuses?” Tichenor asked. “DEI was nowhere to be found because what DEI has done has caused division among people, separating people into certain groups. That’s what we want to get rid of.”
Before he voted in favor of the resolution, Rep. Steve Bratcher, R-Elizabethtown, called out Robertson for wearing a traditional Palestinian headdress, also known as a keffiyeh, asking if he knows “what organization typically wears that scarf?”
“Pro-Palestinian organizations within the U.S. often use it, as well as organizations that fight for Palestinian rights throughout the world, human rights,” Robertson explained.
“In other words, terrorists,” Bratcher shot back.
“It’s not terrorist to defend human rights, sir,” Robertson said.
This story was originally published March 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
