The Official ISCA Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
A podcast from The Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) at Indiana University. ISCA pursues high-level scholarly research into present-day manifestations of anti-Jewish animosity. Such hostility finds public expression through aggressive acts and words. ISCA examines both of these and the relationships between them, especially the intellectual and ideological roots of the “new” antisemitism. In doing so, we seek to elucidate the social, cultural, religious, and political forces that nurture anti-Jewish hostility.
Sunday, May 12, 2024. In this episode, Cary Nelson discusses "The Perilous Campus Scene: Encampment versus Enlightenment."
Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. He is the author or editor of 36 books, including six about antisemitism. Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles was published this April. He was president of the national AAUP from 2006-2012.
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, April 7, 2024. In this episode, Ilan Troen discusses "Religious Dimensions of the Israeli/Palestinian Dispute."
Ilan Troen is a professor emeritus at Brandeis University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a founding editor of the leading journal "Israel Studies" (Indiana University Press). He has contributed to numerous publications about Jews and Israel, including “Tel Aviv, The First Century: Visions, Designs, Actualities” (2012); with Donna Robinson Divine, “Zionism in the 21st Century” (2014) and “Essential Israel: Essays for the 21st Century” (Indiana University Press, 2017). Ilan Troen lived in the United States before making aliyah in 1975. He now lives with his wife, Dr. Carol Troen, and six children in Omer, Israel.
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, April 14, 2024. In this episode, Michal Cotler-Wunsh discusses "The Hamas Massacre of October 7 and Responses to It: A Chronology of Hate."
Michal Cotler-Wunsh is a prominent public speaker, researcher, and independent policy and strategy advisor on intersecting issues of antisemitism, law, human rights, and Zionism. Informed by political, professional, and academic experience, Michal explores topics surrounding mutated and mainstreamed rising antisemitism; international law, human rights, and the harm of their weaponization; the threat of disinformation and conspiracy theories to democracies; Zionism as a millennia-old identity integral to the construction of a progressive national liberation movement; the relationship between Israel and global Jewry in collaborative nation-building; and the role of “Olim” as a “live bridge” to build resiliency, address growing internal gaps, and connect Israel to global communities, cultures, and countries. Michal’s focus on process, transparency, and accountability, continues to inform and guide her in the role of Israel’s Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism, engaging local and global partners around the shared responsibility to comprehensively identify and address the rise and mainstreaming of ever-mutating antisemitic hate.
Michal was a Member of Israel’s 23rd Knesset. Drawing on areas of expertise and commitments, she served as Chair of the Special Committee on Drug and Alcohol Use, Chair of the Subcommittee on Israel-Diaspora Relations, and as active member of several prestigious committees including the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, and the Children’s Rights, Women’s Status, and Immigration and Integration Committees. Michal served as the first Knesset Liaison to the Issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC), was co-chair of the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Friendship Group, was a member of several interparliamentary working groups, and Chair of the Caucus for Ethiopians in Israel. She initiated and led multiple Knesset hearings on the topic of online antisemitism, engaging social media platforms, civil society organizations, and technology experts. Recognizing the inherent connection between online hate and real-world violence, Michal co-founded the Interparliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism, together with multi-partisan elected officials from Canada, Australia, the US, and the UK. She remains at the forefront of this and other initiatives, committed to identifying, exposing, and combatting the mutation and permeation of antisemitism in the online and real-world space.
Equipped with extensive experience, academic expertise and multi-lingual communication skills, Michal is regularly interviewed and featured as a speaker at diverse events in Israel and abroad. She is a prolific author published on multiple platforms, utilizing her hybrid identity and competencies to transcend and bridge geographic, cultural, religious, and linguistic divides. Michal serves as a trustee in The Rabbi Sacks Legacy and is a member of several not-for-profit boards, focused on governance and strategy. She is a legal advisor to the Goldin family, dedicated to the return of deceased Israeli soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, and Israeli civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham a-Sayed, held captive for 9 years in standing violation of international law and human rights. In this, as in other engagements, Michal is committed to underscoring shared responsibility for equal and consistent application of international law and human rights, critical to the sustainability of the infrastructure created to uphold, promote, and protect foundational principles.
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, March 17, 2024. In this episode, Elhanan Yakira discusses "Spinoza, Arendt, and Contemporary Israel Bashing."
Elhanan Yakira is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the Hebrew University. His main fields of interest are early modern rationalism and anti-Israelism, with a special emphasis on Jewish and Israeli anti-Israelism. He has published a number of articles on these subjects, as well as a book: Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust. Three Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, February 18, 2024. In this episode, Françoise Ouzan discusses "Being a GI Jew in World War II: Coping with Hostile Attitudes in the American Military."
Dr. Françoise S. Ouzan is a Senior Research Associate at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University. She is the author or editor of 11 books, including, most recently, How Young Holocaust Survivors Rebuilt Their Lives (2018) and True to My God and Country: How Jewish Americans Fought in World War II (2024), both published by Indiana University Press, Studies in Antisemitism.
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, January 21, 2024. In this episode, Jacob Kovalio discusses "The Global Phenomenon of Conspiratorial Antisemitism."
Jacob Kovalio is a researcher in Japanese, Chinese, Asian, and global history, nationalism, antisemitism, and Jihadism. Through the Transnistria compulsory work camp, Romania. and Israel, he reached Canada in 1986. He holds BA degrees in History and Development Economics from the University of Tel-Aviv and MA in Chinese History and a PhD in Japanese History, both from the University of Pittsburgh. He has taught and given lectures at the University of Tel-Aviv, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of Victoria [Canada], and in Japan, China, and Korea. Since 1987, he has been teaching Japanese/Chinese/Asian History at Carleton University in Ottawa. In 2021 the Government of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun Gold Rays with Rosette for his contributions to Japanese scholarship and Canadian-Japanese relations. Among his publications are The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan: Yudayaka/’Jewish Peril’ Propaganda and Debates in the 1920s,” (2009), Japan in Focus (1994), ed. “Arnold J. Toynbee and Japan,” (in Japan in Focus) “Antisemitism and racism in Japan” online democracy.” Dr. Kovalio has spent six years in Japan; he is fluent in Japanese, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian, and other languages.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, January 14, 2024. In this episode, Richard Landes discusses "Jewish Anti-Zionism and Masochistic Messianism."
Richard Landes was trained as a medievalist at Princeton University (MA 1979, PhD 1984). His work focused on apocalyptic beliefs and millennial movements (Heaven on Earth, 2011), initially around the year 1000 (Peace of God, 1986; Relics, Apocalypse and the Deceits of History, 1996; Apocalyptic Year 1000, 2003). He developed the concept of “demotic religiosity,” an orientation that prizes 1) equality before the law, 2) dignity of manual labor, 3) access to sacred texts for all believers, and 4) moral integrity over social honor. But he increasingly focused on contemporary movements (Paranoid Apocalypse,2006), especially Global Jihad. He made a series of documentaries in 2005/6 titled “According to Palestinian Sources…,” which document the extensive staging of footage (Pallywood), the staging of the Al Durah footage (Making of an Icon), and the impact of that fake broadcast as “news” by Western news media (Icon of Hatred). In 2015, he retired from Boston University where he was a Professor in the History Department and lives with his wife in Jerusalem. He is currently completing a book titled They’re so Smart cause We’re so Stupid: A Medievalist’s Guide to the 21st When he completes this book, he plans to return to his medieval work (While God Tarried: Disappointed Millennialism from Jesus to the Peace of God, 33-1033).
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, December 10, 2023. In this episode, Corinne Blackmer discusses "Queer Anti-Zionism: Antisemitism in LGBTQ Communities Then and Now."
Corinne Blackmer is professor of Judaic Studies and English and director of Judaic Studies at Southern Connecticut State University. She has published a large array of articles on diverse subjects, from pinkwashing, contemporary Israeli literature, and the Hebrew Bible, to Jewish women’s modernism, Jewish ethics, and Jewish women’s graphic novels. She has co-edited with Andrew Pessin a volume on antisemitism, Poisoning the Wells: Antisemitism in Contemporary America, and recently authored (Wayne University Press), Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism, which was a finalist in the National Jewish Books Award. She lives with her wife and family in New Haven Connecticut.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, December 3, 2023. In this episode, Dave Rich discusses "Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism is Built into our World, and How We Can Change it."
Dr. Dave Rich is one of the United Kingdom’s leading experts on antisemitism. He has worked for almost thirty years for the Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity that protects the UK Jewish community and writes about antisemitism and extremism for a range of national and international media. Dave is a research fellow at the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism. Everyday Hate is Dave’s second book, following The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel, and Antisemitism.
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, November 12, 2023. In this episode, Izabella Tabarovsky discusses "Soviet Antizionism and Contemporary Left Antisemitism."
Izabella Tabarovsky is a Senior Advisor at the Kennan Institute (Wilson Center), a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP), a founding fellow of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (LCSCA), and a contributing writer at Tablet. Her research and writing focus on Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism, Soviet Jewry, Holocaust in the USSR, and Stalin's repressions. Her paper, “Demonization Blueprints: Soviet Conspiracist Antizionism in Contemporary Left-Wing Discourse,” appeared in the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism in the summer of 2022. Her book on late-Soviet antizionist campaigns will be published by Routledge as part of an LCSCA series on contemporary antisemitism.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Monday, November 6, 2023. In this episode, Ellie Cohanim discusses "Is Antisemitism an Integral Part of the Islamic Republic of Iran's DNA?"
Ellie Cohanim is a Senior Fellow with Independent Women's Forum (IWF), is host of "Global Perspectives with Ellie Cohanim" for Jewish News Syndicate (JNS),and is a National Security Contributor to Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Ellie Cohanim served as U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the U.S. Department of State by appointment of the President of the United States and the US Secretary of State. She is an expert on Iran, Israel, the Middle East, the Abraham Accords, and US foreign policy. Ms. Cohanim was the State Department’s first Iranian-born Envoy and led diplomatic initiatives which resulted in forging groundbreaking partnerships in the Arab world to combat antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and Islamophobia. Ms. Cohanim also persuaded the first-ever Muslim faith group to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, all as part of the Abraham Accords efforts. As Deputy Envoy, Ms. Cohanim was the lead official for the State Department in creating and implementing policy on countering antisemitism in the Near East and Western Hemisphere regions. She also worked closely with Jewish communities in Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia in confronting local issues of antisemitism.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, October 29, 2023. In this episode, Yehudit Barsky discusses "Islamist Antisemitism in the United States: Recent Developments."
Yehudit Barsky is a Middle East specialist who researches the nexus between Islamist movements and antisemitism. Her research interests encompass radicalization methodologies in antisemitic extremist movements, and the intersection between recruitment systems of jihadist, white supremacist, and other extremist movements. She is a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and is the author of Islamist Antisemitism in the United States (INSS, 2023) and Terrorist Incidents and Attacks Against Jews and Israelis in the US: 1969-2016 (CSS, 2016).
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, October 22, 2023. In this episode, Christopher Leighton discusses "Contending with Christian Supersessionism: When Best Intentions Falter."
Christopher Leighton is the Founding Director of the Institute for Islamic, Christian, Jewish Studies (ICJS) in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to his thirty-three years of inter-religious leadership at the ICJS, he has served as an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University and St. Mary’s Seminary and University. He has published numerous articles and edited Bill Moyer’s resource guide Talking about Genesis (Doubleday 1996) as well as Irreconcilable Differences (Routledge 2001). His latest work, A Sacred Argument: Dispatches from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim Encounter, is forthcoming. He has lectured and conducted seminars in cities around the country. He is a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and is an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has studied extensively at the Baltimore Hebrew University, Yad Vashem, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia University-Teachers College, where he earned his doctorate in Philosophy and Education. Since his retirement, Chris lives with his wife Betsy, and their two dogs in New Harbor, Maine.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, October 15, 2023. In this episode, John Pawlikowski discusses "Removing the Shadow on the Cross: Rooting Out Antisemitism from Christian Teaching."
John is a member of the Order of Friar Servants of Mary (Servites) and was ordained at the University of St. Mary of the Lake. One of the founding faculty members of the Catholic Theological Union (CTU), he served on the faculty from 1968 until his retirement in 2017. For nearly fifty years, John has been an active participant in the Christian-Jewish Dialogue as well as the wider interreligious dialogue. He served for six years as President of the International Council of Christians and Jews and has served several terms on the board of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He was deeply involved in the development of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., having served four terms on its board by presidential appointment. On the social ethics front John has worked with the Office of Justice & Peace at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on its Energy Statement and its Pastoral Letter of the Economy. He has been a participant in three United Nations international conferences on world peace, on alternative energy, and on human trafficking. He was a member of the U.S. governmental team that negotiated the termination of the United Nations Trusteeship for Micronesia. In 2014 the Catholic Theological Society of America conferred on John its annual John Courtney Murray Award. He was awarded fellowships by Cambridge University (UK), The Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), and the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, CA) and awarded Honorary Doctorates by Hebrew Union College, Dominican University, and the Catholic University of Australia.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, September 10, 2023. In this episode, David Bernstein discusses "Does Radical Social Justice Ideology Fuel Antisemitism?"
The author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews, David Bernstein is the founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), which opposes illiberal ideologies and supports liberal values in and out of the Jewish community. He is also a co-founder of the Institute for Liberal Values, a consortium of like-minded organizations supporting liberal principles. He is past President and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the former executive director of the David Project. He spent 13 years at the American Jewish Committee in senior roles. David is a prolific speaker, podcaster, and writer, having written hundreds of opinion pieces in the Jewish and general press.
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, September 3, 2023. In this episode, Dan Michman discusses "'Antisemitism': The Origins, Structure, and Contested Reception of the Term."
Dan Michman is Professor (Emeritus) of Modern Jewish History and the former Chair of the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan; he is also Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and Incumbent of the John Najmann Chair in Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. His publications, available in twelve languages, cover a broad range of topics regarding the Shoah, its historiography and representations, its impact on Israel, world Jewry, and the Western world, and on modern Jewish history and antisemitism. Prof. Michman’s recently (co)-authored and (co)-edited books include Pinkas: Geschiedenis van de joodse gemeenschap in Nederland (A History of the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, (1999); Post-Zionism and the Holocaust: The Role of the Holocaust in the Public Debate on Post-Zionism in Israel (I: 1993–1996, II: 1997–1998) (1997, 2007); Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective: Conceptualizations, Terminology, Approaches and Fundamental Issues (2003); Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Belgium (2005); De la mémoire de la Shoah dans le monde juif (2008); Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements (2008); The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust (2011); Adolf Hitler, the Decision-Making Process Leading to the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Hussayni: The Current State of Research (2017); Getting it Right, Getting it Wrong: Recent Holocaust Scholarship in Light of the Work of Raul Hilberg (2017); Les Juifs d'Afrique du Nord face à l’Allemagne nazie (2018); Emotions, Imaginations, Perceptions, Egos, Characteristics: Egodocuments in Dutch Jewish History (2021); Holocaust Historiography between 1990 to 2021 in Context(s): New Insights, Perceptions, Understandings and Avenues – An Overview and Analysis (2022); Jewish Solidarity : The Ideal and the Reality in the Turmoil of the Shoah (2022).
Music: "Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, May 7, 2023. In this episode, Magda Teter discusses "Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism."
Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies, is a scholar of early modern history, specializing in Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, cultural, legal, and social history, as well as the history of transmission of historical knowledge in the premodern and modern periods. Teter is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2005), Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), and two edited volumes, as well as numerous articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Teter’s work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, YIVO Institute, and the Yad Ha-Nadiv Foundation (Israel), among others. She has been a Harry Starr Fellow in Jewish Studies at Harvard University, an Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies also at Harvard University, and the Mellon Foundation fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In 2012-2016, she served as the co-editor of the AJS Review and in 2015-2017 as the Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies. And in 2020-2021, Teter is the NEH Senior Scholar at the Center for Jewish History.
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, April 30, 2023. In this episode, Ruth Cohen-Dar explores the topic "What is Israel's Role in the Fight Against Antisemitism?"
Ruth Cohen-Dar was born in the Negev to a mother who was a third generation Jerusalemite and a father of Greek descent. They were a family of pioneers, who established a village near Ashkelon. She served in the Israeli Army for three years as an officer, after a year of volunteering as a community worker in a rural community in the Negev. Cohen-Dar holds a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has worked at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1986 and was posted abroad on three occasions, the last time as Deputy Ambassador in Poland. Since 2020 she has served as the Director of The Department for Combating Antisemitism and Holocaust Remembrance, as well as the Co-Chair of Israel's delegation to the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance).
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, April 23, 2023. In this episode, Meron Medzini discusses "Anti-Semitism and Philo-Semitism — Their Role in the Birth of Israel."
Professor (Emeritus) Meron Medzini was born in Jerusalem in 1932. After high school, he served as an infantry officer in the Israeli army and then traveled to the United States to obtain university degrees. He holds a BA from City College of New York (1957), MA from Georgetown University (1960), and Ph.D. from Harvard (1964) in Asian Studies. Between 1962 and 1978, he served as director of the Israel Government Press Office and in that capacity was spokesman for Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin. He has pursued an academic career, teaching for four decades at the Hebrew University School for Overseas Students and in the Department of Asian Studies. He also taught at Tel Aviv University and lectured in various universities abroad. He is the author of nine books. His Golda – A Political Biography (De Gruyter Verlag, Berlin, 2016) won the Israel Prime Minister's Prize. His book on Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust was translated to English and Japanese. He also authored some 100 articles in academic publications in Israel and abroad. In 2016, the Japanese Government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun for promoting Israel-Japan Cultural relations. He resides in Jerusalem.
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, April 16, 2023. In this episode, Jarrod Tanny discusses "Antisemitism in the Academy and the Fate of Jewish Studies: An Insider's View."
Jarrod Tanny is Associate Professor of History and the Charles and Hannah Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Between 2008 and 2010 he was the Schusterman post-Doctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Ohio University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, focusing on Russian and Jewish history. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he completed an M.A. at the University of Toronto and a B.A. at McGill University. His monograph, City of Rogues and Schnorrers (Indiana University Press, 2011), examines how the city of Odessa was mythologized as a Jewish city of sin, celebrated and vilified for its Jewish gangsters, pimps, bawdy musicians, and comedians. In 2012, Dr. Tanny published an essay called “Between the Borscht Belt and the Bible Belt: Crafting Southern Jewishness through Chutzpah and Humor,” in the journal Southern Jewish History. Most recently, he published “Curb Your Orgasm: Larry David and the Schlimazel as Sexual Deviant,” in Jewish Film & New Media: An International Journal. He is currently working on a larger study on Jewish humor in post-World War II America and its place within the larger context of the European Jewish past. Tanny just completed writing a book tentatively titled The Babylonian Seinfeld, a satiric take on the hit TV series, in which the great rabbis of the Talmudic era sit gathered in the Yeshiva to discuss and debate the issues raised in each Seinfeld episode. He has also published numerous opeds on antisemitism in The Forward, Tablet Magazine, The Times of Israel, The Jewish Journal, and The Jewish Review of Books. Tanny’s growing concern over the rise of antisemitism on college campuses and the seeming indifference of faculty led him to establish the Jewish Studies Zionist Network, an association for Jewish Studies scholars who are pushing back against the demonization of Israel and its supporters in the academy.
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Tuesday, April 4, 2023. In this episode, Walter Russell Mead discusses the subject "The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People."
Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College in New York. He is also a member of Aspen Institute Italy and board member of Aspenia. Before joining Hudson, Mr. Mead was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books, including the widely recognized Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). Mr. Mead’s latest book is entitled The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Future of the Jewish People.
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, March 26, 2023. In this episode, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin discusses "Antisemitism and the Politics of Ethnic Studies of California's K-12 and Higher Education Classrooms."
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is co-founder and director of AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization that investigates, documents, and combats antisemitism at institutions of higher education in America. She has written numerous articles about academic anti-Zionism and antisemitism and has lectured widely on these developments and the growing threat they pose to the safety of Jewish students on university campuses. She was a faculty member in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz from 1996-2016.
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, March 5, 2023. In this episode, Linda Maizels discusses "The American Political Left's Response to Antisemitism."
Linda Maizels is an independent scholar who earned her PhD from the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her article on campus antisemitism appeared in the book Contending with Antisemitism in a Rapidly Changing Political Climate,edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld and published by Indiana University Press in November 2021. Her most recent book, What is Antisemitism? A Contemporary Introduction, was published by Routledge in September 2022.
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, February 26, 2023. In this episode, Gideon Botsch discusses "Current Developments of Antisemitism in Germany's Far-Right."
Gideon Botsch studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and earned his diploma in 1997 with a thesis on the continuity of National Socialist concepts of Europe in early right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1999, he received a doctoral scholarship from the Hans Böckler Foundation. In 2003, he was employed at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science with the dissertation "Political Science" supervised by Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel. From 2000 to 2004, he was a lecturer at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Free University of Berlin. In 2004/05, he was a research associate at the Wannsee Conference House Memorial and Educational Site, where he helped design a new permanent exhibition. Since 2004, he has been a lecturer at Touro College Berlin. Beginning in 2006, he has been a research associate for antisemitism and right-wing extremism research at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, which is affiliated with the University of Potsdam, where he also worked as a lecturer. In 2007, he became managing editor of the Journal for Religious and Intellectual History. Since 2010, he has been a tutor of the Hans Böckler Foundation. In 2012, he presented a comprehensive overview of the history of the extreme right in the Federal Republic. Botsch has been an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam since 2018. He is a member of the German Association for Political Science (DVPW), the Society for Intellectual History (GGG), and the Association of Historians in Germany (VHHD).
Music:
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, February 19, 2023. In this episode, Jan Gross discusses the subject "Neighbors: Twenty Years Later."
Jan T. Gross studies modern Europe, focusing on comparative politics, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, Soviet and East European politics, and the Holocaust. After growing up in Poland and attending Warsaw University, he immigrated to the United States in 1969 and earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University (1975). His first book, Polish Society under German Occupation, appeared in 1979. Revolution from Abroad (1988) analyzes how the Soviet regime was imposed in Poland and the Baltic states between 1939 and 1941. Neighbors (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, reconstructs the events that took place in July 1941 in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, where virtually every one of the town’s 1,600 Jewish residents was killed in a single day. Using eyewitness testimony, Professor Gross demonstrates that the Jews of Jedwabne were murdered by their Polish neighbors, not by the German occupiers, as previously assumed. The shocking story occasioned an unprecedented reevaluation of Jewish-Polish relations during World War II and touched off passionate debate. In 2004 many of the Polish voices in this debate were published in translation in a collection, The Neighbors Respond. Professor Gross is also the author of several books in Polish, the coeditor of The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (2000), and the coeditor with Irena Grudzinska-Gross of War Through Children’s Eyes (1981), which uses school compositions and other documents written by children to study how children experience war and deportation. He joined the Princeton History Department in 2003 after teaching at New York University, Emory, Yale, and universities in Paris, Vienna, and Krakow. Professor Gross is the Norman B. Tomlinson ‘16 and ‘48 Professor of War and Society, emeritus.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, February 12, 2023. In this episode, Gallia Lindenstrauss explores the topic "Smooth Sailing or Rough Seas: Turkey, Israel and the Jews in Turkey After the 2022 Normalization."
Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and specializes in Turkish foreign policy. Her additional research interests are ethnic conflicts, Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, the Cyprus issue, and the Kurds. She has written extensively on these topics. Her commentaries and op-eds have appeared in all of the Israeli major media outlets, as well as in international outlets such as National Interest, Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey Analyst and Insight Turkey. Dr. Lindenstrauss completed her Ph.D. in the Department of International Relations at Hebrew University. She formerly lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University, and a visiting fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Wednesday, January 25, 2023. In this episode, Suzanne Brown-Fleming explores the subject of "'Love and Mercy' After the Holocaust: The Vatican's Postwar Clemency Campaign."
Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming is Director of the Division of International Academic Programs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and a former Mandel Center Fellow (2000). She received her Ph.D. in modern German history from the University of Maryland-College Park in 2002. Dr. Brown-Fleming’s most recent publication, ‘May Your Holiness Act in the Interest of Protecting Those who Remain Morally Thinking People:’ Vatican Responses to Antisemitism, 1933, was part of the Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem’s Search and Research Series (2017). Her most recent book, Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, paperback 2019) was named a 2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Her first book, The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany, was published in 2006 by the University of Notre Dame Press in association with the Museum and was a 2006 University Press Book Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries (Category of Religion) by the American Association of University Presses. Her book chapters, essays, and articles have appeared in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the Lessons and Legacies volumes, H-German daily internet forum, and the scholarly journals Holocaust and Genocide Studies, German Studies Review, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Contemporary Church History (Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte), Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, and Religion in Eastern Europe. She sat on the Executive Council of the American Catholic Historical Association (2012 to 2014 Term) and currently sits on the Editorial Board for the Contemporary Church History Quarterly (CCHQ). Dr. Brown-Fleming is Adjunct Professor on the faculty of Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization in Washington, D.C. Dr. Brown-Fleming’s work has been featured in the Catholic News Service (CNS). She has appeared on Cable News Network (CNN), EWTN Global Catholic Television Network, and several documentaries, including Holy Silence (2019), which premiered nationwide on PBS television in 2020. Her current research project, “Il Papa Tedesco (The German Pope): Eugenio Pacelli and Germany, 1917–1958,” is a study of Pope Pius XII’s relationship to Germany and its bishops, leaders, and people during the Weimar era, the Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Her second project, “Opa War Ein Nazi (Grandpa Was a Nazi): Eduard Geist and the Crimes of the Third Reich,” is Dr. Brown-Fleming’s first attempt to research and write as both a decades-long scholar of the Holocaust and as the biological granddaughter of a devout and locally prominent Nazi.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sunday, January 15, 2023. In this episode, Yehuda Bauer explores the subject of "Antisemitism — A Fresh Look."
Professor Yehuda Bauer is Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem. Bauer is fluent in Czech, Slovak, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, English, French, and Polish. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1926. His family migrated to Israel in 1939. After completing high school in Haifa, he attended Cardiff University in Wales on a British scholarship. Upon returning to Israel, he joined Kibbutz Shoval and began his graduate studies at Hebrew University. He received his PhD in 1960 for a thesis on the British Mandate of Palestine. The following year, he began teaching at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Bauer has written numerous articles and books on the Holocaust and on genocide. In 1998, he was awarded the Israel Prize, the highest civilian award in Israel, and in 2001 he was elected a member of the Israeli Academy of Science. Bauer has served as advisor to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research, and as senior advisor to the Swedish Government on the International Forum on Genocide Prevention.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this episode, Yana Grinshpun explores the subject of "Judeophobia and 'Islamophobia' in Today’s France: Symbolism, Doxa, and Reality." Yana Grinshpun is a senior Lecturer at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. She is particularly interested in discourse analysis and media analysis. Her research in recent years is concentrated on the functioning of the media discourse and, in particular, on the propaganda and manipulation spread by the media in democratic societies. Grinshpun’s most recent works concern the rise of antisemitism in France. She is a member of an academic network RRA (Research on Racism and Antisemitism). She directs a research group “New radical discourses” and gives lectures on a regular basis to the special educators working with “radicalized” youth. Sunday, December 4, 2022.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this episode, Franziska Haug discusses "The Function of Antisemitism in Queer-Feminist Discourse." Franziska Haug is a research assistant at the Institute for German Literature and its Didactics at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. She is doing her PhD on the topic of "Literary procedures of the production of gender through labor". In 2021, she was a Visiting Research Scholar at the German Department at NYU (New York University). She is a member of the Forum of Critical Sciences and the Cornelia Goethe Center for Women's and Gender Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research interests include materialism and Marxism, women's and gender studies, pop culture and aesthetics, critical theory, and antisemitism. Sunday, November 13, 2022.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this episode, Ben Cohen discusses "Pandemics, Hate Crimes, and Riots: Media Coverage of Antisemitism Since 2020." Ben Cohen is the award-winning Senior Correspondent of The Algemeiner, one of the leading Jewish news outlets in the United States. Based in New York City, he writes extensively on the challenges posed by antisemitism and political extremism around the globe, especially in western Europe, eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Sunday, November 6, 2022.
"Pleasant Porridge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this episode, Ofir Winter presents his lecture, "Making Peace with the Jews? Contemporary Islamic Arguments for and against Normalization." Ofir Winter is a research fellow at INSS and a lecturer at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Tel Aviv University. He holds a PhD from the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. His doctoral research focused on Egypt and Jordan's quest to legitimize their peace treaties with Israel. He is the author of two books: Zionism in Arab Discourses (Manchester University Press, 2016, with Uriya Shavit); and the recently published, Peace in the Name of Allah: Islamic Discourses on Treaties with Israel (De Gruyter, 2022). Sunday, October 30, 2022.
In this episode, Kenneth L. Marcus delivers his lecture entitled, "The Wayward Healer: Iatrogenic Antisemitism and the Perils of Intervention." Kenneth L. Marcus is founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Center for Liberty & Law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School; and author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press). Sunday, October 23, 2022.
In this episode, Thane Rosenbaum speaks on the topic of "'Occupation,' 'Apartheid,' and 'Ethnic Cleansing': The Trifecta Libel Against Israel." Rosenbaum is a law professor, legal and Middle East analyst, novelist, essayist, and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the Legal Analyst for CBS News Radio and is a frequent guest on various cable news shows on such topics as the Conflict in the Middle East, global antisemitism, terrorism, human rights, moral justice, and Holocaust memory. He hosts The Talk Show at the 92nd Street Y. Sunday, October 16, 2022.
In this episode, Martin Kramer delivers a lecture about "Semites, Anti-Semites, and Bernard Lewis: The Life and Afterlife of a Seminal Book." Kramer is a historian of the Middle East and Israel at Tel Aviv University, and the Walter P. Stern Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the founding president of Shalem College, a liberal arts school in Jerusalem, and a visiting professor or fellow at Brandeis, Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Wilson Center. Among his many publications on Islam, Israel, and the Middle East, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) has been widely discussed and influential. Sunday, October 2, 2022.
In this episode, Jan Grabowski offers his lecture, "'Night Without End': New Scholarship on the Holocaust in Poland." Jan Grabowski is a Professor of History at the University of Ottawa and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Last year he was appointed the 2021-2022 Cleveringa Chair at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His interests focus on the Holocaust in Poland and, more specifically, on the relations between Jews and Poles during the war. Professor Grabowski’s book: Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for 2014. In 2018 he co-edited and co-authored “Dalej jest noc” [Night Without End] (a two-volume study of the fate of the Jews in selected counties of occupied Poland). Night Without End was published in 2022 in English by Indiana University Press. Sunday, September 18, 2022.
In this episode, Jeffrey Herf presents his lecture entitled, "Myths and Realities about Israel's Establishment: Their Relevance for Discussions of Contemporary Antisemitism." Herf is Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches Modern European History. His commentaries on contemporary history and on contemporary antisemitism have been published in American Interest, American Purpose, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Internationale Politik, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, his blog at The Times of Israel, and The Washington Post. Sunday, September 4, 2022.
In this episode, Sam Sokol speaks on "Russia’s 'Denazification' of Ukraine: The Weaponization of Antisemitism in Contemporary Hybrid Conflict." Sokol is a reporter for Haaretz, Israel’s newspaper of record, and the author of the book Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews: Antisemitism, Propaganda, and the Displacement of Ukrainian Jewry. He was previously a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Sunday, August 28, 2022.