Anti-Semitism Archives - Public Seminar

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

What we can learn from scholars of anti-Black racism

October 18, 2023 • by Magda Teter

For almost a century, most of us have focused on dissecting anti-Semitic ideas and ideologies. But—with the very important exception of those studying the Holocaust—we have not paid enough attention to the impact these ideas, images, and actions have on Jews as human beings....

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

Europe & Central Asia

“The Symbolic Equivalent of a Pogrom” in Poland

The attack on historian Jan Grabowski broke the psychological barrier limiting public anti-Semitic actions

June 13, 2023 • by Irena Grudzińska-Gross

Since there are no longer any groupings of recognizable Jews in Poland, the assault on Jan Grabowski is the symbolic equivalent of a pogrom. The otherwise inexplicable destruction of property forms part of the pogrom repertoire. ...

“The Symbolic Equivalent of a Pogrom” in Poland

Activism

Varieties of Antifascism

Russian notes towards a global debate

October 15, 2020 • by Mischa Gabowitsch

_____ A question may bе raised as to why, if we wish to explore new resources for combating fascism, we do not give as much attention to the "potential antifascist." The answer is that we do study trends that stand in opposition to fascism, but we do not conceive that they ...

Europe & Central Asia

Poland Slouches On

After a noxious and underhanded campaign, Poland’s incumbent president, representing the country’s illiberal ruling party, has clinched a narrow re-election victory. That gives the government three more years to dismantle the country’s democracy.

July 17, 2020 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

WARSAW -- In the second round of Poland’s presidential election, incumbent Andrzej Duda narrowly defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. Though he carried just six provinces in eastern Poland, compared to Trzaskowski’s ten, and lost in medium and large cities, Duda’s support in villages and small towns was just enough to push him over the ...

Democracy

Why the Harper’s Letter Got It Wrong

The most serious threats to protest and open debate come not from the left or the right but from the state and powerful political institutions

July 16, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer

So I took a new job in a new city and began again. I have been thinking about my decision to speak up, and its costs, in light of The Letter. You know the one: the open letter in Harper’s magazine that praises the “needed reckoning” of the past few months ...

Why the <em>Harper’s </em>Letter Got It Wrong

Race

The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness

When saying “I’m sorry” is not enough

July 16, 2020 • by Roy L. Brooks

This point is critically important in understanding the duty to apology. So long as the perpetrator or its successor-in-interest is alive (a family or institution, for example), the transgression’s moral stain does not perish with the victims. The perpetrator still has something for which to apologize. It is only the ...

The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness

Politics

The Corbyn Mirage

With little leadership experience, Labour’s leader consistently failed to deliver

February 12, 2020 • by Simon Jones

Labour’s election campaign was an evisceration, handing the Tories an 80 seat majority in the House of Commons and, with no opposition ever having overcome such a deficit in a single electoral cycle, a presumptive decade in power. The party’s heartlands in the North of England were smashed by the Conservatives and ...

Democracy

The Right Terror Threatens Us All

A Call to Uncover Right Extremist Networks In Germany

November 6, 2019 • by Esther Dischereit and Irit Dekel

The murder, on Yom Kippur (October 10th, 2019), of two German citizens in Halle, one outside the synagogue that was the perpetrator’s initial target and another by a nearby Döner bistro, echoed other terror attacks on minorities. These are always described in the German media as acts of an individual ...

Literature

On the Feeling of Anti-Semitism

When Being Jewish Becomes a Liability

October 26, 2019 • by David Stromberg

Whatever you are, it always turns out to be the wrong kind.––Saul Bellow, Seize the Day (1956) The essay below is the third part of a series and is most profitably read in sequence after parts one and two -- comprising a kind of memoir that participates in a literary genre that has become obscured: ...

Blue Monday

Anti-Semitism at the Bard Conference?

When early reports don’t tell the whole story about a protest

October 14, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This is why I re-posted a powerful piece by Batya Ungar-Sargon entitled “I Was Protested at Bard College for Being a Jew” (Forward, October 12 2019) on Facebook. In the piece Ungar-Sargon reported that she was protested “for being a Jew” because a panel discussion on anti-Semitism featuring her and ...

Media

Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and New Media

Plan Andinia and Anti-Semitism in Argentina

October 12, 2019 • by Emmanuel Guerisoli

Cuneo’s oral manifesto went viral across multiple platforms, such as What’s App, Facebook, YouTube, and endless email chains, sparking a public debate over Argentinean Jews’ sacred and exclusive loyalty towards Israel. Pro-Cuneo posts offered many cases of public figures, all of them Jewish, that were Mossad double agents or involved ...

Feature

The Sovereigntist of Reality Television

The Tangles of Diego Fusaro

August 2, 2019 • by Donatella di Cesare

Have they invited a member of CasaPound, the infamous neofascist party, onto television? That sort of thing tends to happen these days. Instead, peeking out on screen is the well sought after tan of Diego Fusaro, with the camera lingering over his shaggy hair and his glaucous eye-catching look. The ...