May 14, 2013 The Church of Scotland Turns Its Back on Its Own History—and the Jews In the face of fierce Jewish criticism, the Church of Scotland is rewording its draft report—“The Inheritance of Abraham”—denying that Jews have a claim the land of Israel rooted in either the Bible or the Holocaust. The draft still favors the BDS’s anti-Israel boycott. Calvinist Scotland—which transplanted Presbyterianism to the U.S.—was once the redoubt of […] Blog
May 11, 2013 Anti-Semitism Without Many—if Any—Jews The phenomenon of anti-Semitism without many—if any—Jews has again been placed in the spotlight by a survey of Polish middle school students about Jews in relation to the seventieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The finding that the children’s knowledge about the Uprising was “extremely weak” has been disputed by Magdalena H. Gross in […] Blog Anti-Semitism
May 10, 2013 AAUP: Israel Boycott Violates Academic Freedom In a stinging rebuke to the Asian-American Studies Association, the American Association of University Professors has just strongly reaffirmed its opposition to academic boycotts. The new AAUP statement responds to both Stephen Hawking’s recent controversial decision to boycott Israel as well as the AASA decision to endorse the anti-Israel boycott. The AAUP acknowledges that individual […] Blog Anti-Zionism
May 9, 2013 So Why Did Stephen Hawking Think It Was OK to Visit China and Iran? Left Foot Forward, a left-wing British political blog, asks this excellent question today about Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott the State of Israel. Indeed, Hawking reportedly traveled to both China and Iran over the last few years. His decision to boycott Israel was reported yesterday, then retracted, then confirmed by the end of the day. Hawking […] Blog Anti-Zionism
May 8, 2013 Is BDS Anti-Semitic? Join the FB Conversation Do you think that the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) is anti-Semitic? Does it matter whether BDS is aimed at Israel’s activities in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, or whether it is aimed at the entire country? Is this a meaningful distinction? A lively discussion is proceeding on the Brandeis Center’s popular Facebook […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
May 8, 2013 Is Art Criticizing Suicide Bombers “Hate Speech”? My second of three posts for the Brandeis Center examines the use of “hate speech” policies on college and university campuses. Specifically, I want to focus on several cases in which these policies have been used to censor or punish students and faculty for expressing speech even mildly critical of Islam. These cases demonstrate that […] Anti-Zionism
May 6, 2013 Free Speech on Campus and the Spirit of Louis Brandeis I was pleased earlier this year when Ken Marcus, President of the Brandeis Center, asked me to guest blog for the Brandeis Center regarding my recent book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, and my work as President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The First Amendment and […] Blog
May 5, 2013 LDB Academic Advisor Alvin Rosenfeld Honored Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, a distinguished scholar and member of the Louis D. Brandeis Center’s Academic Advisory Board, has just received a major award from his home institution, Indiana University. The Brandeis Center congratulates Dr. Rosenfeld for this distinction and commends IU Provost Lauren Robel for bestowing the honor. WASHINGTON, DC, May 5, 2013 — The […] Blog Anti-Semitism
May 5, 2013 Berkeley Student Senate Guts Anti-Israel Divestment Resolution The University of California’s long, ugly battle over anti-Israel divestment has just gotten even messier. Brandeis readers will recall that Berkeley’s student senate passed a resolution on April 18 urging divestment from companies that do business with Israel. Berkeley’s Chancellor Robert Birgeneau immediately repudiated the measure and announced that it would have no impact on […] Blog Anti-Zionism
May 3, 2013 Louis Farrakhan at 80: A Needless Legacy of Hate There are those—like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.—taken from us too soon. Then there are those who live on into historical obsolescence. And so it is that Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan who turns 80 this month. Had Farrakhan’s battle with prostate cancer ended soon after 1996’s Million Man March on Washington, his […] Blog Anti-Semitism
May 3, 2013 Free Speech Expert Greg Lukianoff to Appear on Brandeis Center Blog We’re pleased to announce that Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President Greg Lukianoff will appear as a guest on our blog next week. WASHINGTON, DC, May 3, 2013 — The Louis D. Brandeis Center www.brandeiscenter.com for Human Rights Under Law, an independent civil rights organization established to fight campus anti-Semitism, announced today that civil […] Campus Administrators
May 1, 2013 UC Berkeley Faces New Campus Anti-Semitism Charges Attorneys Neal Sher and Joel Siegel have filed new campus anti-Semitism charges against the University of California at Berkeley as part of their continuing case against Berkeley before the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The new claims are based on the hostile environment which they allege Jewish students faced in the […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
April 30, 2013 “Wake Up to the Anti-Semitism, You Complacent British Middle Classes” In today’s Ha’aretz, Britain’s’s former Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, pens a trenchant critique of English anti-Semitism, bitingly entitled: “Wake up to the anti-Semitism, you complacent British middle classes.” MacShane has seen hard times recently, but today’s intervention demonstrates that he is still a vital voice on the global scene. In this new piece, MacShane […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
April 30, 2013 Jews and Genocide An archetypal joke of the second half of the twentieth century is that Germans (or Europeans) will never forgive the Jews—for the Holocaust. When I think about the historiography of modern anti-Semitism, I think of two odd bookends: the historian Martin Jay—whose claim to fame is a book on the Horkheimer-Adorno Frankfurt School, but whose […] Blog Anti-Semitism
April 28, 2013 Sign-up for the Brandeis Brief Sign up now for the May issue of the Brandeis Brief to stay current on the campaign against campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. The Louis D. Brandeis Center’s electronic newsletter provides original analysis on campus anti-Semitism, the campaign to restore higher education civility, and the Brandeis Center’s latest activities. While you are at it, subscribe to […] Anti-Semitism Blog Anti-Zionism
April 25, 2013 AAAS Urges Israel Boycott, Faces Condemnation from SPME In a general membership vote that has been condemned as “abhorrent,” the Association for Asian-American Studies has unanimously approved a resolution to boycott Israeli universities, becoming the first American scholarly association to do so. Inside Higher Ed describes the AAAS vote, which was startling in its unanimity: About 10 percent of the association’s membership was […] Blog Anti-Zionism
April 24, 2013 Explaining the Tsarnaev Brothers: Brett Stephens’ Historical Analogy to American Jewish Communists Wall Street Journal Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor Brett Stephens (whom I respect) is discovering how much hot water you can get yourself into by using historical analogies to explain a contemporary cause célèbre. He’s being criticized—even wrongly accused of anti-Semitism—for the following comment about the Tsarnaev brothers on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN […] Blog
April 23, 2013 The Re-emergence of Anti-Semitism in Post-Communist Europe I should like to draw attention to the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism’s special issue, “Eastern European Antisemitism” (Vol. 4, Issue # 2, 2012), which is now available on line at http://www.jsanitsemitism.org/pdf/jsa_4-2.pdf Guest edited by Andras Kovacs, Professor of Sociology at the Central European University, Budapest, and specialist in the subject of anti-Semitism in […] Anti-Semitism Blog Anti-Zionism
April 22, 2013 Blaming the Victim for Anti-Semitism LDB Board Member Richard Cravatts (Simmons/SPME) has co-authored this important op ed about the abuse which has lately been heaped upon two of the most outspoken critics of campus anti-Semitism. The piece features LDB Academic Advisor Tammi Rossman Benjamin and British mathematics lecturer Ronnie Fraser, the subject of Brandeis Blog postings here and here and […] Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism Litigation Blog
April 19, 2013 Internet “How to” Bomb Making for Everyone The terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon may temporarily shift the national debate from the manufacture and sale of guns and ammo to bomb making cookbooks on the Internet available to aspiring terrorist chefs of all ages. “Once upon a time this kind of information was known only to large terrorist groups and maybe to […] Blog
April 19, 2013 Berkeley Chancellor Repudiates Student Senate’s Anti-Israel Divestment Resolution Outgoing University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau has rejected the anti-Israel divestment resolution that the Berkeley student senate passed just yesterday. The Daily Californian has published Birgenau’s statement, which emphasizes that the student senate has no influence on the university’s investment policies. In a pointed repudiation of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and […] Blog Anti-Zionism