Defining Antisemitism & Why It Matters

Mark Weitzman is Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and is also Chief Representative of the Center to the United Nations in New York. He is a member of the official US delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Authority (IHRA) where he chaired the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial and is currently chairing the Working Group on Holocaust Museums and Memorials. Described by the London Jewish Chronicle as “the architect” of IHRA’s 2016 adoption of the Working Definition of Antisemitism (which is the first definition of antisemitism with any formal status) he was also the lead author of IHRA’s Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion which was adopted by the 34 member countries of IHRA in 2013. Mr. Weitzman is a participant in the program on Religion and Foreign Policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, served as a member of the advisory panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and co-chaired the Working Group on International Affairs of the Global Forum on Antisemitism. He currently serves as Vice-President of the Association of Holocaust Organizations and was member of the advisory board of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy at Yale University as well as a longtime member of the official Jewish-Catholic Dialogue Group of New York. In 2019 he was invited to be one of the founding board members of the International Organization of Antisemitism Research, the first academic society for the interdisciplinary study of antisemitism. He has been recognized for his work by the US Army, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and also served as the Historical Advisor to the Marvel Comics graphic novel “X-Men: Magneto Testament”.