I posted this wiki extract in the "wrong" thread so I'm posting it again here. It's the opinion of the man who first drew up the definition. I doubt whether Keith and co. will really want to listen to him, let alone contemplate the tainted history of the misuse and abuse of the definition.

Here's what the originator of the definition, Kenneth Stern, now has to say about its abuse (from wiki):

The main drafter of the working definition and its examples, Kenneth S. Stern, has not critised the definition, but has cautioned against the free speech implications of its use as a legal tool. In 2011, he co-authored an article about how the 'Working Definition' was being abused in Title VI cases, because it was being employed in an attempt to "restrict academic freedom and punish political speech." He stated that even when these cases were lost "they chilled pro-Palestinian expression" and "McCarthy-like" usage. In November 2017, Stern explained to the US House of Representatives that the definition has been abused on various US university campuses. He warned that it could "restrict academic freedom and punish political speech" and questioned whether definitions created by minority groups should be legislatively enshrined, giving as one of several examples:

"Imagine a definition designed for Palestinians. If "Denying the Jewish people their right to selfdetermination, and denying Israel the right to exist" is antisemitism, then shouldn't "Denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination, and denying Palestine the right to exist" be anti-Palestinianism? Would they then ask administrators to police and possibly punish campus events by pro-Israel groups who oppose the two state solution, or claim the Palestinian people are a myth?"

He states that the definition was created with data collectors in mind. "I encouraged the Department of State's first Special Envoy for Antisemitism to promote the definition as an important tool. He used it effectively as the framework for a report on global antisemitism." He added: "approaches to antisemitism that endorse and promote academic freedom are more likely to work, in part because they underscore the academy’s goal of increasing knowledge and promoting critical thinking.... approaches that explain academic freedom away or harm it will not only fail, they make the problem worse."