October 9, 2013 Happy Dussehra The Louis D. Brandeis Center wishes a very happy Dussehra (Dasara) to those who celebrate this festival. As we mark this joyous occasion, which commemorates the victory of good over evil, we thank those in the Indian community who have joined hands with us in our battles against campus anti-Semitism and in favor of religious […] Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
October 3, 2013 America’s Current “Weimar Moment” is Greatly Exaggerated The current lamentable federal government shutdown—for which I think there is enough blame to go around—has precipitated a flurry of “not me but thee is the Nazi” accusations from both Ted Cruz’s and Harry Reid’s sides of the Congressional aisle. Such back-and-forth character assassination, alas, has become recurrent in recent national American politics, starting in […] Blog
September 28, 2013 The Swastika as a Symbol of Happiness The Polish criminal code, similarly to criminal codes in other European countries, prohibits incitement to racial hatred; public insult due to race, national, ethnic or religious origin; as well as public propagating of National Socialist and Fascist systems. Those who oppose the penalisation of words – including racist and xenophobic words – will most probably […] Blog Anti-Semitism
September 27, 2013 Call for Papers: Budapest Conference on “Narratives of Violence” This announcement from our colleagues at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and the International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism (ICRAR) will be of interest to our anti-Semitism scholars: A major international conference on Narratives of Violence, conceived by the International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism (ICRAR), of which […] Blog Anti-Semitism
September 19, 2013 UC Berkeley Student Assesses Campus Anti-Semitism UC Berkeley freshman Elijah Z. Granet has written an interesting account of anti-Semitism that he has faced there and on Facebook. Granet’s op ed in The Daily Californian relates his own personal experience with anti-Semitism before he even set his foot on UC Berkeley’s ground. He elaborates on the U.S. Department of Education Office […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
September 19, 2013 Anti-Semitic Group Hate Speech Permeates Facebook Very recently, Facebook Inc. has come under scrutiny for allowing certain hate groups against the Jewish community to stay online, while blocking other hate groups that target other minority communities. Within Facebook’s public, community standards, the company explicitly prohibits the “attack of others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, […] Blog Anti-Semitism
September 12, 2013 WMDS, Barack Obama, and Hegel’s “The Cunning of History” According to Hegel, Reason realizes itself in History through the action of “great men.” However, Hegel argues that Reason does not act in a manner that seems “reasonable” on the surface. Men acting—as Freud would say unconsciously of ultimate results—bring Reason’s purposes to fruition. My starting point here is the assumption that members of the […] Blog
September 12, 2013 Government-Created Anti-Semitism (Part 3) In a recent article written for The Tablet, Kenneth R. Timmerman said that when he traveled to Gaza, Amman, and Damascus in 1994, he kept asking Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders whether they thought the Jews had a plan to dominate the world. Timmerman recounted the enthusiastic answer one Hamas leader: “Yes, indeed. I […] Blog Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism
September 11, 2013 Government-Created Anti-Semitism (Part 2) False accusations against Jews can lead to horrific ends, but so can false charges of anti-Semitism. The problem is that charges of anti-Semitism are almost always met with denial, and it can be difficult to separate legitimate from illegitimate claims. That makes it particularly important to expose false charges when they are uncovered. The importance […] Blog Anti-Semitism
September 10, 2013 Government-Created Anti-Semitism (Part 1) Many people think of Nazi Germany as the cradle of government created anti-Semitism, but long before anyone had heard of the Nazi Holocaust, the Russian concept of pogrom was well known. The 1939 edition of an authoritative Russian dictionary defined pogrom as: “the government-organized mass slaughter of some element of the population as a group, […] Blog Anti-Semitism