Answer The Hate

Message templates

Asking an institution to adopt the IHRA definition

For asking a body you belong to to adopt the IHRA working definition, written so the ask is never the words on their own but the words attached to a person, a process and a date.

  • A week or so
  • Anti-antisemitism
  • antisemitism
  • definitions
  • institutions
  • complaints

The version of this ask that fails is the one that stops at the words. A body that adopts a definition and files it has bought itself a quiet year, and you will have spent your credit on a line in a minute book.

Two things decide whether it goes better than that. What you find out first. Hardly anybody asks what definition and what procedure the institution already has before proposing a new one, and that question is what makes everything you send afterwards credible. And what you attach. Every ask below pairs the definition with something operational, a named role, a stated process, a review date, because that is the part which has to survive the meeting.

Assemble the three blocks below. Change the wording so it sounds like you, a message that reads as a template will be treated as one.

Prepare for two answers you will not enjoy. That you are asking for too much, and that the words are available but the process is not. Decide in advance whether you would accept the second, because you will be asked in the room.

Read using the IHRA working definition first if you haven’t. It covers what the document is, what the qualifying sentences do, and the strongest objection to it.

Block one

Describe the situation

Use this as it stands, or change whatever doesn't sound like you.

Copy this

I am writing to ask that we consider adopting the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, and to ask for one thing alongside it. The definition is non-legally binding, and adopting it creates no obligation and no penalty by itself, so I am not asking anybody here to treat it as law or as a disciplinary standard. Its own text asks that the overall context be taken into account, and I would want us to apply it that way rather than leave that part out. What I am asking is that if we adopt it, we also say who is responsible for applying it, which of our existing procedures it sits inside, and what happens in the first week after somebody reports something. A definition adopted and filed changes nothing, and I would rather we did the smaller thing properly than the larger thing symbolically.

Block two

Say why you are speaking

Pick one. Being straightforward about fear or isolation is not a weakness here. It is often the most persuasive thing you can say.

  • I am raising it because something happened to me here, and I could not find the words for it in anything we publish, which is most of why it went nowhere.
  • I am raising it because a colleague told me what had happened to them, and I realised I had no idea who they were meant to take it to or what would have followed if they had.
  • I am raising it because we already name several other forms of hatred in our own guidance, and I cannot explain to anybody why this one is the gap.
  • I am raising it because people bring things to me, and I am currently inventing the standard as I go, which is not fair to them and would not hold up if I got it wrong.
  • I am raising it because I am not Jewish, this costs me very little to say, and it seemed wrong to leave the saying of it to the people it lands on.
  • I am raising it because I have read the objection about political speech, and I think the honest answer to it is a written process rather than silence.
  • I am raising it because I would rather know now what we would do, than find it out in the week we actually need it.

Block three

Make your ask

Ordered from easiest to hardest. Choose what you can actually stand behind.

Ask what we already haveEasiest
Please tell me which definition of antisemitism we currently work to, if any, and which procedure a report would travel through. I am asking before I propose anything.
Ask what has been recordedStraightforward
Please tell us how many reports in this area we have had over the past two years and how each was categorised, so that whatever we adopt is measured against something real.
Reference it in existing guidanceStraightforward
Please reference the working definition in the guidance we already publish, with its qualifying wording included, and name the procedure it is meant to inform.
Adoption plus a named ownerBolder
Please adopt the definition and name the role responsible for applying it, so that anybody reporting something knows who reads it and can find them.
Adoption plus a written processHard
Please adopt the definition alongside a written process covering what happens in the first week after a report, who decides the outcome, what training goes to the people applying it, and what protection for political expression sits in the same document.
Put a formal proposal to the deciderHardest
Please put a formal proposal to whichever body can decide this, carrying the definition, the named role, the process and a date for reviewing how it has worked in practice. I will help draft it.

Rules worth holding to

  1. Do not present it as law. It is non-legally binding and says so itself, and anybody who oversells that gets corrected in front of the room.
  2. Do not tell people that adoption obliges them to do anything. On its own it obliges nobody, which is exactly why you are asking for the rest.
  3. Never ask for adoption without asking what happens the day after. A definition with nothing attached to it changes nothing.
  4. Expect the free expression objection and arrive holding an answer. It comes from serious people, including from inside the drafting, so plan for it rather than being winded by it.
  5. Quote the qualifying wording as well as the examples. The text asks for the overall context to be taken into account, and whoever you are writing to may have it open.
  6. Ask what the institution already has before you propose a fix. Proposing a repair to a procedure you have not read is the fastest way to be dismissed.
  7. Find out what a body actually resolved. Adopt, endorse, recognise and support are different words, and they are used for different things.
  8. Accept that asking for the process is slower, and that some bodies will take the words and refuse the rest. That is a real cost of this ask, not a reason to drop it.
  9. Keep a dated copy of what you sent and what came back, somewhere that is not an account the institution controls.