LDB Explains the New Anti-Semitism

Download PDF

Washington, D.C.: Louis D. Brandeis Center President Kenneth L. Marcus has contributed important scholarship on “The Ideology of the New Anti-Semitism” to Indiana University scholar Alvin Rosenfeld’s landmark new edited volume, Deciphering the New Antisemitism. Founded in 2011, The Brandeis Center (LDB) is a Washington, D.C., based civil rights organization that combats anti-Semitism in higher education through research, education, and legal advocacy. The publication of “The Ideology of the New Anti-Semitism” continues LDB’s substantial recent production of scholarly research to illuminate the nature and scope of the new anti-Semitism.

The editor of Deciphering the New Anti-Semitism, Alvin Rosenfeld, is a distinguished member of LDB’s Academic Advisory Board. At Indiana University Bloomington, the internationally distinguished scholar serves as the Director of Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Professor of Jewish Studies and English.

Deciphering the New Antisemitism addresses the issue of anti-Semitism through a global perspective as the essays examine how it molds into various forms in all parts of the world. Published on November 24, 2015, the book is a part of the “Studies in Antisemitism” series through the Indiana University Press. Publishers Weekly reports that “this volume, rich in information, is not for the casual reader, but is recommended as a valuable compilation of research and analysis that will help concerned readers track the evolution of anti-Semitism and determine which trends are most worrisome.”
“People need to understand that ideological anti-Semitism is not just a subjective viewpoint nor even just a form of bias but actually a profoundly pathological way of seeing the world,” says LDB’s Marcus. “This builds on our other recent work illuminating the nature of the new anti-Semitism and explaining how it can be addressed through scholarship, education, law, and public policy.”

Other contributors to Rosenfeld’s volume on Deciphering the New Anti-Semitism include Pascal Bruckner, Günther Jikeli, Elhanan Yakira, Doron Ben-Atar, Bruno Chaouat, Mark Weitzman, Bernard Harrison, Matthias Küntzel, and Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias. Topics range from “Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia” to “Holocaust Denial” to “Anti-Semitism and the Contemporary Left” and more.

Marcus’s key paper on “The Ideology of the New Anti-Semitism” explains how anti-Zionism functions as the central aspect in a distorted vision, not only of the Jewish people, but of the entire world. That is to say, ideological anti-Zionism, like its anti-Semitic predecessors, provides a pathological means of understanding (or misunderstanding) all of the world and its various misfortunes and not just one piece of it.

Other recent publications from Marcus include his new book, The Definition of Anti-Semitism (New York: Oxford University Press: 2015), and a chapter in Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr.’s edited volume, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel (MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights: 2014).

Additionally, LDB and Trinity College jointly published an Anti-Semitism Report, presenting the results from a national survey of American Jewish college students which found that in one-half of the 2013-2014 academic year, over 50% of the over 1100 Jewish American college students polled had experienced or witnesses anti-Semitism on their campus.

Table of Contents
Introduction Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Part I. Defining and Assessing Antisemitism
1. Antisemitism and Islamophobia: The Inversion of the Debt—Pascal Bruckner
2. The Ideology of the New Antisemitism—Kenneth L. Marcus
3. A Framework for Assessing Antisemitism: Three Case Studies (Dieudonné, Erdoğan, and Hamas)—Günther Jikeli
4. Virtuous Antisemitism—Elhanan Yakira

Part II. Intellectual and Ideological Contexts
5. Historicizing the Transhistorical: Apostasy and the Dialectic of Jew-Hatred—Doron Ben-Atar
6. Literary Theory and the Delegitimization of Israel—Jean Axelrad Cahan
7. Good News from France: There Is No New Antisemitism—Bruno Chaouat
8. Anti-Zionism and the Anarchist Tradition—Eirik Eiglad
9. Antisemitism and the Radical Catholic Traditionalist Movement—Mark Weitzman

Part III. Holocaust Denial, Evasion, Minimization
10. The Uniqueness Debate Revisited—Bernard Harrison
11. Denial, Evasion, and Anti-Historical Antisemitism: The Continuing Assault on Memory—David Patterson
12. Generational Changes in the Holocaust Denial Movement in the United States—Aryeh Tuchman

Part IV. Regional Manifestations
13. From Occupation to Occupy: Antisemitism and the Contemporary Left in the United States—Sina Arnold
14. The EU’s Responses to Contemporary Antisemitism: A Shell Game—R. Amy Elman
15. Anti-Israeli Boycotts: European and International Human Rights Law Perspectives—Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias
16. Delegitimizing Israel in Germany and Austria: Past Politics, the Iranian Threat, and Post-national Anti-Zionism—Stephan Grigat
17. Antisemitism and Antiurbanism, Past and Present: Empirical and Theoretical Approaches—Bodo Kahmann
18. Tehran’s Efforts to Mobilize Antisemitism: The Global Impact—Matthias Küntzel
List of Contributors
Index