part of speech word dangerous

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What part of speech is dangerous.

Dangerous can be categorized as an adjective .

• 1. dangerous is an adjective.

Inflections

• Positive Comparative Superlative
• dangerous   more dangerous most dangerous
• Positive : dangerous  
• Comparative : more dangerous
• Superlative : most dangerous

Adjective to adverb

• Adjective Adverb
• dangerous dangerously  
• adjective : dangerous
• adverb : dangerously  

What does dangerous mean?

Examples of dangerous, last searches.

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Definition of dangerous

• jeopardizing
• threatening
• venturesome

dangerous , hazardous , precarious , perilous , risky mean bringing or involving the chance of loss or injury.

dangerous applies to something that may cause harm or loss unless dealt with carefully.

hazardous implies great and continuous risk of harm or failure.

precarious suggests both insecurity and uncertainty.

perilous strongly implies the immediacy of danger.

risky often applies to a known and accepted danger.

Examples of dangerous in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dangerous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

see danger entry 1

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing dangerous

• armed and dangerous
• dangerous ground / territory
• dangerous waters
• on dangerous ground

Dictionary Entries Near dangerous

danger money

dangerous ground/territory

Cite this Entry

“Dangerous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dangerous. Accessed 3 May. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of dangerous, legal definition, legal definition of dangerous.

Note: The activity that an offender is likely to engage in need not involve violence in order for the offender to be deemed dangerous.

More from Merriam-Webster on dangerous

Nglish: Translation of dangerous for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of dangerous for Arabic Speakers

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Parts of Speech for Dangerous

Gramatical hierarchy.

Grammatically "Dangerous" is a adjective. But also it is used as a noun.

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• Knowledge Base
• Parts of speech

The 8 Parts of Speech | Definition & Examples

A part of speech (also called a word class ) is a category that describes the role a word plays in a sentence. Understanding the different parts of speech can help you analyse how words function in a sentence and improve your writing.

The parts of speech are classified differently in different grammars, but most traditional grammars list eight parts of speech in English: nouns , pronouns , verbs , adjectives , adverbs , prepositions , conjunctions , and interjections . Some modern grammars add others, such as determiners and articles .

Many words can function as different parts of speech depending on how they are used. For example, ‘laugh’ can be a noun (e.g., ‘I like your laugh’) or a verb (e.g., ‘don’t laugh’).

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Table of contents

Prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, other parts of speech, frequently asked questions.

A noun is a word that refers to a person, concept, place, or thing. Nouns can act as the subject of a sentence (i.e., the person or thing performing the action) or as the object of a verb (i.e., the person or thing affected by the action).

There are numerous types of nouns, including common nouns (used to refer to nonspecific people, concepts, places, or things), proper nouns (used to refer to specific people, concepts, places, or things), and collective nouns (used to refer to a group of people or things).

Ella lives in France .

Other types of nouns include countable and uncountable nouns , concrete nouns , abstract nouns , and gerunds .

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A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. Pronouns typically refer back to an antecedent (a previously mentioned noun) and must demonstrate correct pronoun-antecedent agreement . Like nouns, pronouns can refer to people, places, concepts, and things.

There are numerous types of pronouns, including personal pronouns (used in place of the proper name of a person), demonstrative pronouns (used to refer to specific things and indicate their relative position), and interrogative pronouns (used to introduce questions about things, people, and ownership).

That is a horrible painting!

A verb is a word that describes an action (e.g., ‘jump’), occurrence (e.g., ‘become’), or state of being (e.g., ‘exist’). Verbs indicate what the subject of a sentence is doing. Every complete sentence must contain at least one verb.

Verbs can change form depending on subject (e.g., first person singular), tense (e.g., past simple ), mood (e.g., interrogative), and voice (e.g., passive voice ).

Regular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participle are formed by adding’-ed’ to the end of the word (or ‘-d’ if the word already ends in ‘e’). Irregular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participles are formed in some other way.

‘I’ve already checked twice’.

‘I heard that you used to sing ‘.

Other types of verbs include auxiliary verbs , linking verbs , modal verbs , and phrasal verbs .

An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun. Adjectives can be attributive , appearing before a noun (e.g., ‘a red hat’), or predicative , appearing after a noun with the use of a linking verb like ‘to be’ (e.g., ‘the hat is red ‘).

Adjectives can also have a comparative function. Comparative adjectives compare two or more things. Superlative adjectives describe something as having the most or least of a specific characteristic.

Other types of adjectives include coordinate adjectives , participial adjectives , and denominal adjectives .

An adverb is a word that can modify a verb, adjective, adverb, or sentence. Adverbs are often formed by adding ‘-ly’ to the end of an adjective (e.g., ‘slow’ becomes ‘slowly’), although not all adverbs have this ending, and not all words with this ending are adverbs.

There are numerous types of adverbs, including adverbs of manner (used to describe how something occurs), adverbs of degree (used to indicate extent or degree), and adverbs of place (used to describe the location of an action or event).

Talia writes quite quickly.

Other types of adverbs include adverbs of frequency , adverbs of purpose , focusing adverbs , and adverbial phrases .

A preposition is a word (e.g., ‘at’) or phrase (e.g., ‘on top of’) used to show the relationship between the different parts of a sentence. Prepositions can be used to indicate aspects such as time , place , and direction .

I left the cup on the kitchen counter.

A conjunction is a word used to connect different parts of a sentence (e.g., words, phrases, or clauses).

The main types of conjunctions are coordinating conjunctions (used to connect items that are grammatically equal), subordinating conjunctions (used to introduce a dependent clause), and correlative conjunctions (used in pairs to join grammatically equal parts of a sentence).

You can choose what movie we watch because I chose the last time.

An interjection is a word or phrase used to express a feeling, give a command, or greet someone. Interjections are a grammatically independent part of speech, so they can often be excluded from a sentence without affecting the meaning.

Types of interjections include volitive interjections (used to make a demand or request), emotive interjections (used to express a feeling or reaction), cognitive interjections (used to indicate thoughts), and greetings and parting words (used at the beginning and end of a conversation).

Ouch ! I hurt my arm.

I’m, um , not sure.

The traditional classification of English words into eight parts of speech is by no means the only one or the objective truth. Grammarians have often divided them into more or fewer classes. Other commonly mentioned parts of speech include determiners and articles.

Determiners

A determiner is a word that describes a noun by indicating quantity, possession, or relative position.

Common types of determiners include demonstrative determiners (used to indicate the relative position of a noun), possessive determiners (used to describe ownership), and quantifiers (used to indicate the quantity of a noun).

My brother is selling his old car.

Other types of determiners include distributive determiners , determiners of difference , and numbers .

An article is a word that modifies a noun by indicating whether it is specific or general.

• The definite article the is used to refer to a specific version of a noun. The can be used with all countable and uncountable nouns (e.g., ‘the door’, ‘the energy’, ‘the mountains’).
• The indefinite articles a and an refer to general or unspecific nouns. The indefinite articles can only be used with singular countable nouns (e.g., ‘a poster’, ‘an engine’).

There’s a concert this weekend.

A is an indefinite article (along with an ). While articles can be classed as their own part of speech, they’re also considered a type of determiner .

The indefinite articles are used to introduce nonspecific countable nouns (e.g., ‘a dog’, ‘an island’).

In is primarily classed as a preposition, but it can be classed as various other parts of speech, depending on how it is used:

• Preposition (e.g., ‘ in the field’)
• Noun (e.g., ‘I have an in with that company’)
• Adjective (e.g., ‘Tim is part of the in crowd’)
• Adverb (e.g., ‘Will you be in this evening?’)

As a part of speech, and is classed as a conjunction . Specifically, it’s a coordinating conjunction .

And can be used to connect grammatically equal parts of a sentence, such as two nouns (e.g., ‘a cup and plate’), or two adjectives (e.g., ‘strong and smart’). And can also be used to connect phrases and clauses.

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Parts of Speech

What are the parts of speech, a formal definition.

Table of Contents

The Part of Speech Is Determined by the Word's Function

Are there 8 or 9 parts of speech, the nine parts of speech, (1) adjective, (3) conjunction, (4) determiner, (5) interjection, (7) preposition, (8) pronoun, why the parts of speech are important, video lesson.

• You need to dig a well . (noun)
• You look well . (adjective)
• You dance well . (adverb)
• Well , I agree. (interjection)
• My eyes will well up. (verb)
• red, happy, enormous
• Ask the boy in the red jumper.
• I live in a happy place.
• I caught a fish this morning! I mean an enormous one.
• happily, loosely, often
• They skipped happily to the counter.
• Tie the knot loosely so they can escape.
• I often walk to work.
• It is an intriguingly magic setting.
• He plays the piano extremely well.
• and, or, but
• it is a large and important city.
• Shall we run to the hills or hide in the bushes?
• I know you are lying, but I cannot prove it.
• my, those, two, many
• My dog is fine with those cats.
• There are two dogs but many cats.
• ouch, oops, eek
• Ouch , that hurt.
• Oops , it's broken.
• Eek! A mouse just ran past my foot!
• leader, town, apple
• Take me to your leader .
• I will see you in town later.
• An apple fell on his head .
• in, near, on, with
• Sarah is hiding in the box.
• I live near the train station.
• Put your hands on your head.
• She yelled with enthusiasm.
• she, we, they, that
• Joanne is smart. She is also funny.
• Our team has studied the evidence. We know the truth.
• Jack and Jill went up the hill, but they never returned.
• That is clever!
• work, be, write, exist
• Tony works down the pit now. He was unemployed.
• I will write a song for you.
• I think aliens exist .

Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer video to text? Here is a list of all our grammar videos .

Video for Each Part of Speech

The Most Important Writing Issues

The top issue related to adjectives, the top issue related to adverbs.

• Extremely annoyed, she stared menacingly at her rival.
• Infuriated, she glared at her rival.

The Top Issue Related to Conjunctions

• Burger, Fries, and a shake
• Fish, chips and peas

The Top Issue Related to Determiners

The Top Issue Related to Interjections

The top issue related to nouns, the top issue related to prepositions, the top issue related to pronouns, the top issue related to verbs.

• Crack the parts of speech to help with learning a foreign language or to take your writing to the next level.

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The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples

• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Parts of Speech

• Word types can be divided into nine parts of speech:
• prepositions
• conjunctions
• articles/determiners
• interjections
• Some words can be considered more than one part of speech, depending on context and usage.
• Interjections can form complete sentences on their own.

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won't make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won't even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure  and the  English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into  open classes  (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and  closed classes  (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). Open classes can be altered and added to as language develops, and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics , parts of speech are generally referred to as word classes or syntactic categories. The main difference is that word classes are classified according to more strict linguistic criteria. Within word classes, there is the lexical, or open class, and the function, or closed class.

The 9 Parts of Speech

Read about each part of speech below, and practice identifying each.

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they're the official name of something or someone, and they're called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence . They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​  I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject's state of being ( is , was ). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples:  sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became.

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples:  hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Many adjectives can be turned into adjectives by adding the suffix - ly . Examples:  softly, quickly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions  show spatial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase , which contains a preposition and its object. Examples:  up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples:  and, but, or, so, yet.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples of articles:  a, an, the ; examples of determiners:  these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles  as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners , which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples:  ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections ( Hooray! ) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below,  work  functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

• Bosco showed up for  work  two hours late.
• The noun  work  is the thing Bosco shows up for.
• He will have to  work  until midnight.
• The verb  work  is the action he must perform.
• His  work  permit expires next month.
• The  attributive noun  (or converted adjective) work  modifies the noun  permit .

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject, and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

In the short sentence above,  birds  is the noun and  fly  is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it's a verb command with an understood "you" noun.

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, "(You) go!"

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what's happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When  is an adverb that modifies the verb fly.  The word before  is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it's a preposition because it's followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time ( before winter ) that answers the question of when the birds migrate . Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.

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What part of speech is dangerous?

The word dangerous is an adjective. The noun form is danger.

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Add your answer:

What part of speech is danger?

Danger is a noun. Other words that come from danger are dangerous, which is an adjective, and dangerously, which is an adverb.

What part of speech is hate?

A noun, verb, or adjective:Hate is a dangerous vice. (noun, subject of the sentence)I hate him. (verb)He was arrested for his hate speech. (adjective, describes the noun 'speech')

What part of speech is works?

what part of speech is work

What part of speech is What part of speech is?

What part of speech is camping.

i want to know what part of speech is camping

What is the part of speech of dangerous in the following sentence The weather can be dangerous?

Dangerous is an adjective.

What part of speech is dangerouse?

Dangerous is a adjective.

What part of speech is dangerously?

&quot;dangerously&quot; is an adverb, as it provides information on how an action is performed.

What part of speech is the word danger?

The word "dangerous" is an adjective, a word that describes a noun. Example:We keep dangerous products in a locked cabinet so the baby can't get to them.

What is the part of speech and definition of manufacture?

part of speech

What is the part of speech of momentous?

The part of speech for this particular word is a noun.

What part of speech Without?

what part of speech is beneath

Did Voltaire think free speech was dangerous?

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What is Dangerous Speech?

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Dangerous Speech is any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group. Susan Benesch coined this term (and founded the Dangerous Speech Project) after observing that fear-inducing, divisive rhetoric rises steadily before outbreaks of mass violence and that it is often uncannily similar, even in different countries, cultures, and historical periods. We call these rhetorical similarities ‘hallmarks’ of Dangerous Speech. One of them is dehumanization, or referring to people as insects, despised animals, bacteria, or cancer. This can make violence seem acceptable: if people seem like cockroaches or microbes, it’s okay to get rid of them.

Another hallmark is to tell people that they face a mortal threat from a disfavored or minority group, which makes violence seem not just acceptable, but necessary. This hallmark has been dubbed ‘accusation in a mirror’ because it asserts that violence would come from the opposite side – from those who are actually the would-be victims of violence. How can one know which speech is dangerous? One must make an educated, systematic guess. Dangerous Speech cannot be identified solely by the hallmarks or by any aspect of its content, since its capacity to inspire violence depends so much on its context – on who spreads it, how, to whom, and in what social and historical context.

We have developed a test for dangerousness based on the message itself and four related elements: Speaker, Audience, Context, and Medium. These are known as the Dangerous Speech Framework and their elements are described in a bit more detail below.

Dangerous Speech often contains ‘hallmarks’ such as dehumanization or ‘accusation in a mirror.’ Another example of a hallmark is to portray the target group as violating the purity of the in-group, making violence a necessary method of preserving one’s identity. Some Dangerous Speech never makes direct reference to the target group. Instead, it describes members of the in-group either as traitors for being to sympathetic to the other group or as good virtuous in-group members, for example because they express their hatred of the other group.

Some speakers are more influential than others, and they are therefore more capable of compelling a group to violence. Influence may stem from their status as political, religious, or cultural leaders, or they may gain influence from their natural charisma. The speaker can be anonymous, and in some cases that can make the speaker more influential.

When an audience is already ‘primed’ for violence, they will be more easily swayed by Dangerous Speech. A primed audience might be one that is already fearful of other groups, one that has longstanding and unresolved trauma, or one that lacks ties to other social groups – especially the target group. When Dangerous Speech is delivered to an audience that is not susceptible, it is unlikely to lead to violence.

The context consists of the social, historical, and political environment in which speech reaches its audience. Aspects of the context that are conducive to Dangerous Speech include longstanding competition over resources, previous episodes of violence, difficult living conditions, an ongoing war, etc.

The medium, or means of dissemination, can make speech more dangerous if it possesses its own influence. For example, a medium that is the audience’s only or primary source of information is likely to have significant influence over that audience. Mediums with influence may be a popular newspaper, a particular language, or a type of communication technology – for example, radio, television, or the Internet.

Countering Dangerous Speech

Violence may be prevented by interfering with Dangerous Speech in any of several ways: inhibiting the speech, limiting its dissemination, undermining the credibility of the speaker, or ‘inoculating’ the audience against the speech so that they are less easily influenced by it. Such efforts must not infringe upon freedom of speech since that is a fundamental right – and when people are prevented from expressing their grievances, they are less likely to resolve them peacefully and more likely to resort to violence. For more information on some methods of countering Dangerous Speech, please see our page on counterspeech .

Part of Speech

What part of speech is “what”.

In English texts and verbal communication, the word what also have various functions. It can be used as a adjective , an adverb , a pronoun, or an interjection .

This word is commonly classified as an adjective if it is used to introduce a noun or a noun phrase. In the sample sentence below:

What time is it?

The word “ what ” introduces the noun “time,” and is therefore considere d as a adjective.

Definition:

a.  asking for information specifying something

• What books did you buy?

In some cases, the word “ what ” is considered as an adverb if it modifies a verb. For instance, in the sample sentence below:

What does he care?

The word “ what ” functions as an adverb because it modifies the verb “care.”

a.  in what way

• What does it matter ?

The word “ what ” is also normally categorized as a pronoun if it is used for asking questions about something or if it is used to substitute a noun. For example, in the sentence below:

What we need is commitment.

This “ wha t” word is classified under pronouns because it replaces a thing or a noun.

• What is beauty ?

b.  used to describe a question

• What is this?

c.  the thing or things that (used in specifying something)

• I want to do what I can to make a difference.
• Interjection

Other times, this word is classified under interjections because it can be used to express sudden emotions. Take for example, the sentence:

What a suggestion!

In this sample sentence, the word “ what ” is used to exclaim and express a burst of emotion regarding the noun “suggestion.”

a.  emphasizing something surprising or remarkable

• What a charming lady !

Meta ban on Arabic word used to praise violence limits free speech, Oversight Board says

T he independent board that oversees content moderation of Facebook owner Meta is urging the company to loosen restrictions on “shaheed,” arguing the blanket ban on the Arabic word which has been used to praise acts of violence has led to widespread censorship of millions of users from Arabic-speaking and Muslim communities. 

Under its current policy, Meta removes “shaheed” when it's used in reference to people it classifies as dangerous.

That “blunt method” is "overbroad and disproportionately restricts freedom of expression and civic discourse,” by disregarding the word’s linguistic complexity and its many uses, and treating it instead as the equivalent of the English word ‘martyr,’” said Oversight Board co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

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The result is the removal of content that does not praise terrorism or violence, the board said in its decision.

What's more, Meta’s policies that prohibit incitement to violence and support of designated terrorists and terrorist organizations, when properly enforced, already address the dangers posed by terrorist activity on the company's platforms, the board said.

Meta should only take down Facebook, Instagram and Thread posts containing “shaheed” when use of the word is tied to clear-cut signs of violence – such as imagery of weapons, a statement of intent or advocacy to take up arms or a reference to an attack – or when a post breaks other rules such as expressing approval of or glorifying a known terrorist, the board recommended.

Meta told USA TODAY that it would review the feedback and respond within 60 days.

Meta asked Oversight Board to weigh in on 'shaheed' policy

The Muslim and Arabic communities had called on Meta to lift the "shaheed" ban. Jewish and Israeli groups warned that changing the policy would increase antisemitic content on Meta's platforms.

In 2020, Meta conducted an internal review of its ban on “shaheed” when referring to individuals it has designated as dangerous, such as terrorist individuals or organizations, but did not reach a consensus.

Noting that "shaheed" is the most commonly removed word or phrase on Meta's platforms under the company's moderation rules, the social media giant asked the Oversight Board to weigh in more than a year ago. The panel is a diverse group of professors, lawyers, human rights activists and others from around the world that Meta taps for guidance on thorny policy questions.

"We want people to be able to use our platforms to share their views, and we have a set of policies to help them do so safely," Meta said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We aim to apply these policies fairly but doing so at scale brings global challenges, which is why in February 2023 we sought the Oversight Board's guidance on how we treat the word ‘shaheed’ when referring to designated individuals or organizations."

The controversy came into sharper focus following the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7 during which an estimated 1,400 people were killed or taken hostage and during Israel’s subsequent months-long assault on Gaza that has killed 32,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

The Oversight Board said it was finalizing its opinion on "shaheed" when Hamas attacked Israel, so it extended its research to observe use of the word during the Gaza conflict, but that additional research did not change the board's thinking.

What does shaheed mean?

The literal meaning of the Arabic word “shaheed” is “witness” and, while it roughly translates to “martyr” in English and is commonly used to praise those who die while committing violent acts, it has numerous meanings in Arabic and its interpretation largely depends on the context in which it is used. 

"Anyone killed unjustly, or anyone that died on their way to their studies, as well as those who have died for their homeland, are just a few of the circumstances that qualify someone to be referred to as Shaheed. The term is used in many circumstances, but the vast majority of those referred to as Shaheed are civilians," Nadim Nashif, founder and general director of 7amleh − The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media − said in a statement. "Meta needs to have a more contextualized and nuanced approach to this aspect of Arab and Islamic culture."

That approach is needed as people grieve the death toll in Gaza, Nashif said.

"As the largest social media company in the world, which generates billions of dollars in profits annually, Meta has the responsibility to have a more contextualized approach to moderating sensitive terms for the Arab world, as well as for all peoples," he said.

The Oversight Board agreed. Thorning-Schmidt said the current policy unfairly limits “people’s ability to debate and condemn the violence they see around them” and stops legitimate use of the word such as news reporting and discussion about victims of terrorism and other types of violence.

“It can even lead to those speaking about deceased loved ones having their content taken down in error,” Thorning-Schmidt said in a statement. 

Critics warn 'shaheed' shift could flood Facebook and Instagram with antisemitic posts

Pro-Palestinian groups have long complained they are unfairly targeted by Meta content moderation. Jewish and Israeli groups have voiced their own concerns that Meta's policies and enforcement have failed to stem the flood of antisemitic content on its platforms. Those tensions have only intensified during the Gaza conflict.

“Even with these policies on the books, we have seen an explosion in calls to terror against Jews and Israelis following Oct. 7,” Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, founder and executive director of CyberWell, an Israeli nonprofit organization that tracks online antisemitism, told USA TODAY. “These calls to terror and violence will be normalized and, more importantly, more people will be exposed to them, possibly leading to additional violence at a time there is already a lot of violence and targeted antisemitic attacks.”

CyberWell said its researchers flagged 300 pieces of content on Facebook that contained the word “shaheed” and praise for violent acts. It recommended that Meta flag content that mentions “shaheed” and “Jews” and that it increase oversight of variations of the word to identify and remove potentially violent content.

The policy shift the Oversight Board is recommending would unleash even more hate speech and violent threats on Meta’s platforms, according to Montemayor.

“Post Oct. 7, there seems to be an online trend of glorifying of terrorism happening on social media platforms and it should be concerning to all of us,” she said. “Terror groups and radical ideologies are actively leveraging the vulnerabilities of social media platforms and it’s the responsibility of the platforms to recognize that and have policies and content moderation practices to meet those challenges and not pretend like it’s not happening. It’s happening very clearly.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Meta ban on Arabic word used to praise violence limits free speech, Oversight Board says

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Campus protests over the Gaza war

How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words.

Rachel Treisman

Columbia University faculty and staff gather on the campus in solidarity with student protesters on Monday. Stefan Jeremiah/AP hide caption

Columbia University faculty and staff gather on the campus in solidarity with student protesters on Monday.

Sarah Phillips was on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington for meetings Saturday when she saw social media posts calling for help protecting students' free speech rights.

When Phillips, an anthropology professor at IU, arrived at the site of the campus protest she recognized some of her students, "completely peaceful," standing face-to-face with what she described as heavily armed riot police. Reflexively, she started walking toward them.

"My instincts just kicked in," she told NPR on Monday. "And a few moments later, I found myself on the ground, handcuffed and being marched with some students and other faculty to a bus that was ready to take us away to the local jail."

The students were protesting at Dunn Meadow, a university-designated assembly area since 1969 and the site of an encampment that the school administration banned in a widely criticized last-minute policy change .

A few days earlier, on Thursday, Indiana state and university police had arrested 33 people as they tried to disperse the crowd. Protesters quickly regrouped, and Phillips was alarmed to hear on Saturday that armed police were once again gathering at the park.

She was one of four faculty members and 19 students arrested that day alone — among the hundreds of people who have been arrested at pro-Palestinian campus protests across the country in the last two weeks.

Demonstrators at Indiana, as in many other states, are calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to both university investment in Israeli-affiliated companies and its partnership with a nearby U.S. Navy installation.

And professors are increasingly standing with students, in what many describe as an effort to safeguard the students' right to protest.

Middle East crisis — explained

As student protesters get arrested, they risk being banned from campus too.

"As a faculty member who cares about freedom of speech — who sees freedom of speech as the bedrock of democracy and really as the foundation for a public education — I see it as my responsibility to speak up when I see harm being done to students and their rights being violated," Phillips said. "And if my voice isn't enough, then I'm going to have to speak up, so to say, for them in other ways."

Most of the people arrested on Saturday, including Phillips, were hit with the misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass. All were also handed slips of paper by university police banning them from school property for one year (with the exception of one organizer who was banned for five years ).

The administration later said that students and faculty who were arrested can appeal their trespass warnings with university police, and will be allowed on campus to finish the semester while that process is underway.

Phillips plans to do so. But, she says, this last week of classes is especially important for professors in terms of meeting with students and administering finals — and that experience has already been disrupted. On Monday, her students presented their final projects on Zoom rather than in their classroom.

"I know we're all being very careful to not violate the terms of that trespass ban, because we've been informed that, should we do so, that the consequences could ramp up and be even worse than they are right now," she said.

Protests at Indiana have continued, with demonstrators now also calling for the university's president and provost to step down. More than 800 current and emeritus faculty members from the school have also signed an open letter calling for their resignation or removal.

As pro-Palestinian protests spread, more university leaders weigh police involvement

It's one of several schools around the country where professors are getting arrested at demonstrations, circulating letters in support of arrested protesters and holding no-confidence votes in their administrations.

At Columbia University, for example, faculty members in orange vests linked arms , forming a human wall at the entrance to students' encampment as police arrived to break it up on Monday. Professors at Emory University staged a campus walkout that same day, chanting "hands off our students."

Many faculty members, disturbed by the forceful police response to protests, are increasingly standing up for students' academic freedom — and pushing back against university leadership that they see as infringing on it.

"I feel like faculty are in triage mode right now," said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "They're helping the students, putting their bodies on the line ... they're dealing with the administration with no-confidence votes, but also trying to deal with the administration directly to get them to back off and do the right thing."

Faculty are attending — and getting arrested at — protests

Indiana State Police riot squad arrested dozens of people during a pro-Palestinian protest in Dunn Meadow in Bloomington on Thursday. Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

Indiana State Police riot squad arrested dozens of people during a pro-Palestinian protest in Dunn Meadow in Bloomington on Thursday.

Hundreds of students have been arrested at campus protests within the last week. There is no exact tally of how many professors have been arrested, according to the AAUP, but news stories and social media reports suggest the numbers are steadily mounting.

Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, was among the protesters arrested at a campus demonstration on Saturday at Washington University in St. Louis, with video showing several officers slamming him to the ground.

In a statement read by a student on Tuesday, Tamari said he was "body slammed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County Police officers and then dragged across campus by the police," and remains hospitalized with broken ribs and a broken hand.

Two professors were among the 28 people arrested at Emory University on Thursday, after the administration called in city and state police to disperse a protest. Both high-profile arrests were captured on bystander videos.

In one, economics professor Caroline Fohlin approaches several police officers as they wrestle a protester to the ground, asking "what are you doing?" and telling them to get away. As she approaches, one officer grabs her by the wrist and flips her onto the sidewalk. Another comes over to help zip-tie her hands behind her back, as she protests: "I am a professor!"

Nearly 300 people arrested at campus protests against the war in Gaza this weekend

Fohlin was later charged with battery against a police officer. Her lawyer, Gregory Clement, later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the arrest was misguided.

"Caroline Fohlin was not a protester at Emory on April 25," Clement said. "She emerged from her office, concerned only about the treatment of students on the quad."

The other professor arrested, Noëlle McAfee, was captured on video urging bystanders to notify the philosophy department — of which she is the chair — of her arrest as she is led away in handcuffs.

McAfee later told 11Alive News that she was passing through the area of the protest when she came across cops "pummeling" a young protester, and stood nearby asking them to stop. She didn't leave when police told her to, and was charged with disorderly conduct.

Twenty years ago, she said, she probably would have been one of those protesters. Today, she's focused less on the Israel-Hamas conflict at the heart of the demonstrations and more on what she calls the issue of "issue of higher education administrators clamping down on free expression and delegitimizing any kind of dissent."

"At this season of my life my job is to protect the students and to protect ... academic freedom. I can do that better than they can do that," she said. "And I think that's what we're seeing with faculty all over, both wanting to protect the students and wanting to call out administrations that are actually putting the students at risk."

Top companies are on students' divest list. But does it really work?

But some faculty members are participating in protests themselves, joining students in calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and divestment from companies that do business with Israel.

Steven Thrasher, a journalism professor and chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern University's Medill School, has been acting in what he calls a role of faculty support for the student encampment on its Illinois campus.

When the encampment started last week, he and other members of the group Educators for Justice in Palestine mobilized to make sure there would be faculty members available for bail support, university negotiations and physically defending student protesters, including by signing up for four-hour shifts on site.

Columbia University protesters occupy a campus building, echoing 1968

"We're making sure that there's always four of us who are there, that the students know that we're there," Thrasher told NPR on Friday. "But ... we did not expect to be in a human barricade position in the first 10 minutes, which is what happened [Thursday] morning."

At protests, Thrasher identifies himself as someone who is willing to be arrested. He hopes that doesn't happen, but says he feels "quite committed to, if there's violence that can happen between the students and the administration or cops, that I'm going to put my body in that space when I'm there."

Thrasher acknowledges he's motivated by more than just protecting students' free speech.

"I would think that if I saw students who disagreed with me politically ... I would also intervene" on their behalf, he said. "But for me, it's also, I'm supporting them in something that I think is very righteous, and I'm very proud of them."

On Monday, Northwestern students and administrators reached an agreement to end the campus encampment.

Several faculty members have said in speeches and social media posts that they fear they will lose their jobs or face other repercussions for speaking out.

Mulvey, of the AAUP, says it's riskier for non-tenured professors to take a stand — and the long-term decline in tenure at American universities means that most do not have it . She said those dynamics are damaging not only to higher education institutions but democracy itself.

"If higher education faculty are beholden to saying what powerful people want them to say, and if they stray out of the line they're going to get fired, we are living in an authoritarian society," she said.

Faculty members are making demands — including resignations — of leadership

Emory University professors held a walkout on Monday in support of student protesters. Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Emory University professors held a walkout on Monday in support of student protesters.

Faculty members at a growing list of schools are also making their opinions and demands known in writing.

Some are speaking up based on their subject matter expertise, like history professors at the University of Southern California and media school professors at Indiana University .

"As a faculty expressly charged with teaching our students about these values in the pursuit of journalism and other expressions of public communication, we strongly dissent from these anti-democratic acts," the Indiana professors wrote.

Professors at Northeastern University , where over 100 people were arrested on Saturday , sent university leaders a letter urging them to drop charges against protesters and issue a public apology and retraction of false allegations of antisemitism, among other demands. At least 144 Vanderbilt University professors signed a letter expressing support for student protesters and criticizing its "excessive and punitive" response.

In Columbia University's protests of 1968 and 2024, what's similar — and different

At Princeton, where two graduate students were arrested and suspended from campus for setting up tents, faculty members signed a letter condemning their punishment and demanding their reinstatement. Over 300 Yale professors signed a similar letter pressing university leaders to call on authorities to drop charges against all 48 protesters arrested and take no further disciplinary action against them.

"The use of policing, penalization and retribution to avoid protest or dialogue with students cannot stand, as this is no model for an educational institution," the Yale professors wrote.

And faculty members at some schools — including Barnard , Emory , UT-Austin and Cal Poly Humboldt — are issuing votes and statements of no confidence in their presidents, over their response to campus protests.

Consider This from NPR

How today's college protests echo history.

The principle of shared governance — which the AAUP defines as the "joint responsibility of faculty, administrations, and governing boards to govern colleges and universities" — is key to helping campuses move forward, Mulvey says.

She says most schools already have mechanisms — like faculty senates and academic councils — through which faculty members and administrators can engage with each other over what's happening and how to respond. But at many schools, she says, administrations are currently ignoring that structure.

"If you're not upholding it when it's needed, then it means nothing," she says. "The first thing is going to have to be a rebuilding of trust. And that trust takes a long time to build and repair."

Education and community as a path forward

Students work on their class assignments at a demonstration at George Washington University on Sunday. Cliff Owen/AP hide caption

Students work on their class assignments at a demonstration at George Washington University on Sunday.

Campus protests, occupations and mass arrests are continuing, even as many schools wrap up classes and final exams.

Despite the frenzy, Mulvey believes professors generally will do their best to help students complete the term.

"My feeling is that the vast majority of faculty will bend over backwards to fulfill their academic obligations to the students ... whether it means a written final instead of an in-class final, whether it means extensions on projects, whether it means additional office hours," she said.

Enlighten Me with Rachel Martin

This palestinian american professor leans on his quaker faith during conflict.

Mulvey sees the way forward as through education both inside and beyond the classroom. Thrasher, at Northwestern, agrees. He's currently teaching a graduate seminar called "The Theater of Protest," and accompanied his students to the encampment for a field trip during Monday's class.

Thrasher, who has reported on various Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protests over the years, says these sorts of encampments are "really amazing pedagogical spaces" where lots of valuable learning can happen, from interfaith prayers to lending libraries.

Phillips, the Indiana professor who was arrested, agrees that students are "our best teachers right now."

Like Thrasher, she says the best thing to come out of this turmoil is the deepening of solidarities within the community — she says she's spent time with colleagues in ways she hasn't in her more than two decades at the university, and seeing many newly emboldened to stand up for their beliefs.

"There's definitely no more business as usual," she says. "We have really come together in a way that has shown how fragile community can be, but also how important community is."

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Talk of an Immigrant ‘Invasion’ Grows in Republican Ads and Speech

Once relegated to the margins of the national debate, the word is now part of the party’s mainstream message on immigration.

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By Jazmine Ulloa

Reporting from Washington, D.C.

A campaign ad from a Republican congressional candidate from Indiana sums up the arrival of migrants at the border with one word. He doesn’t call it a problem or a crisis.

He calls it an “invasion.”

The word invasion also appears in ads for two Republicans competing for a Senate seat in Michigan. And it shows up in an ad for a Republican congresswoman seeking re-election in central New York, and in one for a Missouri lieutenant governor running for the state’s governorship. In West Virginia, ads for a Republican representative facing an uphill climb for the Senate say President Biden “created this invasion” of migrants.

It was not so long ago that the term invasion had been mostly relegated to the margins of the national immigration debate. Many candidates and political figures tended to avoid the word, which echoed demagoguery in previous centuries targeting Asian, Latino and European immigrants. Few mainstream Republicans dared use it.

But now, the word has become a staple of Republican immigration rhetoric. Use of the term in television campaign ads in the current election cycle has already eclipsed the total from the previous one , data show, and the word appears in speeches, TV interviews and even in legislation proposed in Congress.

The resurgence of the term exemplifies the shift in Republican rhetoric in the era of former President Donald J. Trump and his right-wing supporters . Language once considered hostile has become common , sometimes precisely because it runs counter to politically correct sensibilities. Immigration has also become more divisive, with even Democratic mayors complaining about the number of migrants in their cities.

Democrats and advocates for migrants denounce the word and its recent turn from being taboo. Historians and analysts who study political rhetoric have long warned that the term dehumanizes those to whom it refers and could stoke violence, noting that it appeared in writings by perpetrators of deadly mass shootings in Pittsburgh, Pa.; El Paso, Texas; and Buffalo, N.Y., in recent years.

Republicans defend using the word and see it as an apt descriptor for a situation that they argue has intensified beyond crisis levels and one that could help sway voters.

Mike Speedy, the Indiana congressional candidate whose ad used the word, is running on calls to tighten the nation’s southern border. Mr. Speedy, a state lawmaker, traveled nearly 2,000 miles to Yuma, Ariz., to film his ad among the rusty slabs of the border fence. He contended that invasion was an accurate word because it describes a force that overwhelms and does not necessarily involve weapons. He said in an interview that he was not concerned that the word could incite others to violence. “If they act on their hatred, they are a common criminal and they should be put to court,” he said.

The word invasion has appeared in 27 television ads for Republican candidates — accounting for more than $5 million in ad spending — ahead of the November 2024 election, according to early April data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. That surpasses the 22 uses of the word during the entire 2022 midterm cycle, which totaled nearly $3.3 million in ad spending. During the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, advertisers spent just under $300,000 in four ads that deployed the term.

America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group, has tracked the word’s rise in Congress. The group has collected at least 20 examples of Republicans using it in floor speeches this legislative session, up from seven during the last session and none before that. The term appears in four pieces of legislation this year, compared with seven last year and three in 2022.

Analysts who study political rhetoric and extremism have continued to raise alarm that the word invasion and what they describe as similarly inflammatory language regarding immigration plays into replacement theory . The racist doctrine, which has circulated in far right-wing corners of the internet, holds that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans. The shooters in Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo echoed the theory in online posts, and targeted Jews, Hispanics and Black people in their killings.

“An invasion by its very definition is a hostile entrance or a hostile encroachment,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama administration official who now leads the homeland-security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “You are automatically perceiving people who are fleeing their countries for a million reasons — most of them not hostile — as enemies.”

Representative Alex Mooney, the West Virginia Republican competing against a Trump-endorsed candidate, echoed Mr. Speedy’s view. “There is film footage of people forcing their way into our country along the Texas-Mexico border and the Biden administration is just letting it happen,” he said.

Maca Casado, the Hispanic media director for the Biden campaign, said voters would again reject Mr. Trump’s immigration rhetoric, describing it as “cruel and anti-American politics as usual to distract from an agenda that does nothing to address the things voters actually care about.”

The Trump campaign said that Mr. Biden was allowing undocumented immigrants “to invade our border.”

“By definition, an invasion is an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. “There is no better way to describe Joe Biden’s open border, which has allowed tens of millions of people to freely enter our country.”

Political speech stoking fears of an invasion at the southern border is as old as the border itself. The jagged, 2,000-mile line dividing Mexico and the United States was born of a war that left each side wary of attack from the other. During the 19th century, with Chinese laborers migrating to work on the railroads, rallying cries of a feared Chinese invasion led to the nation’s first exclusionary immigration laws based explicitly on race. Political leaders stirred similar fears regarding migrants from Japan , Korea, India and southern and Eastern Europe .

Pat Buchanan was among the few ardent users of the word in recent decades, warning of “immigrant invasions” eroding Western society during his unsuccessful campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1990s. And Gov. Pete Wilson of California, seeking re-election in 1992, ran ads urging Congress to “ stop the invasion ” of Mexican and other Latino immigrants.

Mr. Trump gave the word a new currency. Throughout his presidency, he portrayed migrants as invading masses, and his 2020 re-election campaign pushed the idea through hundreds of Facebook ads. Mr. Trump has made immigration his signature issue for 2024 and has only escalated his remarks, at times using language that invokes the racial hatred of Hitler by describing migrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Other Republicans followed suit. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, promising to finish Mr. Trump’s border wall, warned that “ homes are being invaded .” His office has since argued that illegal immigration and drug smuggling are an “invasion” under the U.S. Constitution, authorizing Texas to “engage in war” in the name of border security.

Immigrant-rights groups argue the language has not helped curb border crossings — which started rising under Mr. Trump and slowed early on in the pandemic before increasing again — or aided Republicans in elections. Predictions of a red wave in 2022 fizzled despite Republican fear-mongering about migrants, said Zachary Mueller, senior research director at America’s Voice.

“Yes, it works to mobilize their base,” he said. “But I don’t think the vast majority of people are going to sign up for that level of vitriol.”

John Thomas, a Republican strategist in California, said he did not expect the talk of invasion to fade.

“The word invasion matches the intensity that a lot of the electorate feels on that issue right now,” he said. Its use is “only going to ramp up as we head into November.”

Jazmine Ulloa is a national politics reporter for The Times, covering the 2024 presidential campaign. She is based in Washington. More about Jazmine Ulloa

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

From Florida  to Arizona , the presidential campaign trail was brimming with reminders of just how central Democrats hope the abortion rights debate will be  to voters’ decisions this fall.

Donald Trump urged college presidents to take a tougher approach to protests over the war in Gaza that have swept across campuses and praised police action at the demonstrations .

Trump told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would not commit to accepting the results  of the 2024 election, as he again repeated his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The Ultimate D.C. Veteran:  In 30 years of Senate bids, Joe Biden was such a formidable incumbent  that he did not face a serious threat to his return to office. But his last re-election is shaping up to be a fight.

Awash in Federal Money:  Across Milwaukee, there is evidence of federal money from laws passed under the Biden administration. The president hopes voters will notice .

Disinformation at the Border:  A flier urging migrants to vote for Biden rocketed around right-wing social media. But was it authentic ?

A Match Made in MAGA:  Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Donald Trump Jr. have bonded politically and personally . It’s a relationship that could factor into the former president’s search for a running mate.

US House passes controversial bill that expands definition of anti-Semitism

Rights groups warn that the definition could further chill freedom of speech as protests continue on college campuses.

The United States House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would expand the federal definition of anti-Semitism, despite opposition from civil liberties groups.

The bill passed the House on Wednesday by a margin of 320 to 91, and it is largely seen as a reaction to the ongoing antiwar protests unfolding on US university campuses. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Keep reading

The take: university protests spread across the us, at least 200 arrested at may day clashes in turkey, university gaza protests rage on with columbia arrests and violence at ucla.

If the bill were to become law, it would codify a definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

That is a federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. Adding IHRA’s definition to the law would allow the federal Department of Education to restrict funding and other resources to campuses perceived as tolerating anti-Semitism.

But critics warn IHRA’s definition could be used to stifle campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of 34,568 Palestinians so far.

What is the definition?

IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities”.

According to the IHRA, that definition also encompasses the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.

The group also includes certain examples in its definition to illustrate anti-Semitism. Saying, for instance, that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” would be deemed anti-Semitic under its terms. The definition also bars any comparison between “contemporary Israeli policy” and “that of the Nazis”.

However, IHRA does specify that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic”.

Bipartisan criticism

Rights groups, however, have raised concerns the definition nevertheless conflates criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

In a letter sent to lawmakers on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged House members to vote against the legislation, saying federal law already prohibits anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment.

The bill is “therefore not needed to protect against anti-Semitic discrimination”, the letter said.

“Instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.”

Those fears were echoed within the House of Representatives itself. During a hearing on Tuesday, Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat, said the scope of the definition was too broad.

“By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly,” he said.

Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican, also criticised the bill in a post on the social media platform X, noting that it only referred to the IHRA definition, without providing the exact language or stating clearly which parts would be enshrined into law.

“To find the legally adopted definition of anti-Semitism, one must go to [the IHRA website],” he wrote.

“Not only is the definition listed there, but one also finds specific examples of anti-Semitic speech. Are those examples made part of the law as well?”

Concerns on campus

The IHRA adopted its current definition of anti-Semitism in 2016, and its framing has been embraced by the US State Department under President Joe Biden and his two predecessors.

The vote on Wednesday comes as renewed protests have swept across college campuses in opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza. April has seen the spread of encampments on university lawns, as students call for university leaders to divest from Israel and for government officials to call for a ceasefire.

The Biden administration and other top Washington officials have pledged steadfast support for Israel, despite mounting humanitarian concerns over its military campaign.

US lawmakers also have upped the pressure on university administrators to quash the protests, which they have portrayed as inherently anti-Semitic.

Protest leaders across the country, however, have rejected that characterisation. Instead, they accuse administrators and local officials of conflating support for Palestinians with anti-Semitism.

They also have said their rights are being trampled by administrators who seek to appease lawmakers, prompting at times violent police crackdowns on the encampments.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that several House committees would be tasked with a probe into alleged campus anti-Semitism. But critics fear the investigation could ultimately threaten to withhold federal research grants and other government support from the universities where the protests are occurring.