ISGAP, in conjunction with the Jewish People Planning Institute and the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, as well as dozens of leading scholars from around the world, has been actively engaged in the Antisemitism Measuring Project since the fall of 2016.

The project was launched under the belief that a unifying framework for assessing what we know collectively, and what we don’t know, is lacking, leaving us with an inability to properly understand trends in contemporary antisemitism. To resolve this issue, the Antisemitism Measuring Project is focused on collaboration, with widespread engagement and mutual support among the plethora of entities active in the field, in order to create a unified “tool” to measure levels of global antisemitism.

The project originally convened in Paris, with subsequent meetings being held in New York City and Vienna. These exploratory gatherings produced an Opus report that reviewed and analyzed the wide array of measuring initiatives and tools that are currently tackling aspects of monitoring antisemitism.

During the 2018 Global Forum on Combating Antisemitism, the first phase of the project was presented in order to provide a thorough report on the international research project’s mission to develop a tool to measure, map and decode global antisemitism. The panel presented a preliminary unifying framework for collating what we know, as well as what we do not know, about contemporary antisemitism. The panel addressed the need for consistent terminology and focus regarding the acquisition of knowledge about contemporary antisemitism and the need for a policy-oriented posture to guide information gathering. It further emphasized the need to unify, organize and disseminate the findings of those working on issues related to global antisemitism, as well as enhanced participation by international communities potentially under threat.

The second phase of the project was launched in 2019 with a focus on an international coalition of practitioners, scholars, community leaders and data analysts creating an online, interactive antisemitism measurement tool and database. These tools will be designed to provide a meaningful, expansive and dynamic knowledge base useful to all. Rather than supplant existing projects or “reinventing the wheel”, the goal is to engage broadly, integrate, and leverage the efforts of many. This improved, structured collaboration will: create inter-organizational synergy and enable us to compare trends over time and across countries. Comparative analysis will enable us to generate a sense of “best practices” for both collecting data and combating antisemitism. It will also lower barriers to entry for communities who currently lack the capacity to monitor the threat of antisemitism. Integrated, relevant data will be accessible to scholars around the world. It will also create a “dashboard” of indicators to address the needs of communities—providing early warning and improved capacity to defend their interests.

 

Publications: