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The Arkansas Senate Education Committee held a hearing on Wednesday where a new bill — SB 352 — to address and prohibit antisemitic discrimination in the state’s public K-12 schools and institutions of higher education was presented.
After the discussion, the bill — the full text of which is available HERE — was advanced with a majority voice vote.
The legislation — sponsored by Senator Matt Stone and supported by Senator Ben Gilmore, with companion legislation in the Arkansas House of Representatives sponsored by Representative Howard Beaty — defines antisemitism using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, including its 11 contemporary examples.
The IHRA antisemitism definition was already adopted by Arkansas in February 2023 via SB 118, passed by the State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
A total of 37 U.S. states have adopted the definition, according to a database compiled by the Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) by CAM.
SB 352 requires the integration of the definition into student and employee codes of conduct, and gives teeth to Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act by directing the Arkansas Department of Education to designate a Title VI Coordinator to monitor, review, and investigate all complaints and incidents of discrimination, including antisemitism, in public K-12 and post-secondary schools.
The legislation is backed by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), and CAM Senior Advisor Gabriel Groisman spoke before the committee at Wednesday’s hearing at the State Capitol in Little Rock.
“There are only two ways to deal with an issue like antisemitism,” Groisman noted in his testimony. “We can either sit back and wait for it to happen in our communities or we can be active and try to squash it at the beginning. It’s clear that Arkansas has not been waiting, and I urge Arkansas not to wait. This is something that will send a message all across the country, that antisemitism and the scourge we’re seeing all over the country is not welcome here in Arkansas.”
CAM is leading an organized effort to engage and educate state legislators across the United States on antisemitism-related issues and potential policy remedies, such as the bill now under consideration in Arkansas.
Similar legislative initiatives have also been put forth in Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas in recent weeks.
