HIDEANDOLA stands for “Hidden Antisemitism and Communicative Skills of Criminal Lawyers and Journalists”, and it’s a project founded by the EU (CERV-2022).

It aims to implement equality through the improvement of the way criminalization choices and attitudes of law enforcement agencies in relation to antisemitic behaviour are elaborated and then communicated, especially by journalists.

To reach this object, we have established a multidisciplinary research group composed by Jurists and sociologists, uniting four universities (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, Università di Pisa, Università degli studi di Firenze and Università degli studi di Palermo) and two high profile centers experts on this matters (Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporanea’s Osservatorio Antisemitismo and Osservatorio di Pavia).

Together, we will provide an in-depth empirical and theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, which today is predominantly cryptic or hidden, and seek to improve the process of identifying and communicating incidents and expressions of anti-Semitism, in order to foster public narratives that are more effective in countering the most widespread and insidious anti-Semitic stereotypes. To the same end, we will attempt to refine the media portrayal of general criminalization choices and the specific content of crime definitions even as they are worked out in the courts.

Moreover, the project aims at elaborating shared communicative guidelines that will be used to train legal practitioners and journalists on how to express the moral stigma conveyed on antisemitism by criminal law and on how to deal with ‘blurred’ cases. This EU-founded research will also involve the carrying out of training activities, which will basically revolve around two training courses, for legal experts (magistrates, lawyers, etc.) and journalists respectively.

The first course, more specifically, will be carried out through classroom activities mainly led by the team members of UNIFI and Osservatorio, but will also be supported by members of the other units; the course aimed at journalists will take place through classroom activities conducted mainly by members of the SSSA, UNIPI and UNIPA teams and will be specifically concerned with training the target group on the criminal laws concerning racial discrimination and neo-anti-Semitism, but also on the fundamental working mechanisms of criminal law and criminalisation, so as to improve their ability to communicate these contents correctly, without undue approximations. 

DISCLAIMER: The Hideandola project is funded by the European Union. The views expressed in the texts are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or DG Just. Therefore, neither the European Union nor the funding authority can be held responsible for the contents.