Alvin Rosenfeld 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 Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law today lauded LDB Academic Advisor Alvin Rosenfeld on the occasion of his receipt of the Provosts Medal from Indiana University. Indiana University Bloomington Provost Lauren Robel presented the Provost’s Medal to Professor Rosenfeld, an internationally recognized scholar of contemporary anti-Semitism, Holocaust literature, and Jewish studies who established and has led Indiana University’s Jewish Studies program as well as its Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Rosenfeld is IU’s Irving M. Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies, a professor of English and Jewish studies, and a member of the Louis D. Brandeis Center’s Academic Advisory Board. Although he is best known for his work in Holocaust literature, Rosenfeld is also a leading expert in the study of contemporary campus anti-Semitism. The Brandeis Center, which was established to combat campus anti-Semitism, has been privileged to have Dr. Rosenfeld on its board and to work with The Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. In addition, this blog recently described the success of Rosenfeld’s newest book, The End of the Holocaust. (more…)
A University of North Carolina professor, Omid Safi, has reportedly falsified a blog posting on Israel’s 1948 treatment of Palestinians at Deir Yassin by illustrating it with a photograph that was in fact taken of Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The Elder of Zioyon blog, among others, reports that Safi has used this Holocaust concentration camp photograph in posting on the Religion News Service (RNS) blog. The photograph was removed before we visited the site, but it is shown in this image captured from Safi’s posting: This misuse of this Holocaust image illustrates the concept of “Holocaust inversion,” which is used to describe the practice of Jews, Zionists or Israelis of behaving like Nazis or having culpability for Holocaust-like crimes. Holocaust inversion is often described as an indicator of anti-Semitic expression. The U.S. Department of State, for example, has explained this phenomenon as a kind of “Holocaust denial or trivialization” in its report on Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism.” (more…)
Catherine Chatterley Historian Catherine Chatterley, a member of the Louis D. Brandeis Center’s Academic Advisory Board, will deliver a lecture on April 11 on “Canada’s Struggle with Holocaust Memorialization: The War Museum Controversy, Ethnic Identity Politics, & the Canadian Museum for Human Rights” at the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research in Montreal. It is sadly true that the preservation of Holocaust memory has become an intensely polarizing political issue in some academic and political circles, not only in the Middle East and Europe but also in North America. Dr. Chatterley, the Founding Director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, is an astute social critic as well as an accomplished scholar, so this event promises to be worth attending. (more…)