With anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence on the rise around the world, the USC Shoah Foundation this fall launches a new Antisemitism Lecture Series where leading scholars will guide audiences through the latest research and explore a diversity of approaches to understanding and combating the current upsurge.
Upcoming Lectures
October 11, 2023, at 1:00 PM PT Hybrid Event
History of Antisemitism
Guest Speakers: Dr. Robert J. Williams, Mark Weitzman, and Dr. James Wald
Dr. Robert J. Williams is the Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation. He is UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education and the Advisor to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, where he also served for four years as chair of the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial. He has played several leadership roles in international and policy initiatives focused on Holocaust and antisemitism issues, and regularly advises international organizations and governments on these matters.
Mark Weitzman is Chief Operating Officer for the World Jewish Restitution Organization where he plays a leading role in organization’s advocacy and negotiations efforts to recover Jewish properties in Europe in pursuit of a measure of justice for Holocaust survivors, their families, and Jewish communities.
Dr. James Wald holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. His teaching and research interests include modern European history with an emphasis on cultural history from the 18th through the 20th centuries; the French Revolution; Central Europe; fascism and Nazism; and early modern Europe. Particular research interests involve the history of intellectuals and literary life.
November 8, 2023, at 11:00 AM PT Online Event
Antisemitism and Online Dynamics
Guest Speaker: Dr. Matthias Becker
Dr. Matthias J. Becker is the project lead on “Decoding Antisemitism” at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität Berlin and was a postdoc research fellow at the Vidal Sassoon Center at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. He studied Linguistics, Philosophy, and Literature at the Free University of Berlin, and has worked with several research projects on the use of language in political and media campaigns at the Technical University.
Details and registration forthcoming.
January 11, 2024, at 1:00 PM PT Online Event
Antisemitism and the Blood Libel
Guest Speaker: Dr. Magda Teter
Dr. Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, 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. Dr. 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.
Details and registration forthcoming.
February 22, 2024, at 1:00 PM PT Online Event
Antisemitism on Wikipedia: Distorting the History of the Holocaust
Guest Speaker: Dr. Shira Klein
Dr. Shira Klein is Associate Professor, Chair, Department of History at Wilkinson College at Chapman University. Dr. Klein focuses on Italian Jewry, Jewish migration, and the Holocaust. Her book, Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was selected as finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award. Her next book project will examine Italian Jews’ participation in Italy’s African empire from the 1890s to World War II, including their ties to indigenous Jews in Libya and Ethiopia.
Dr. Klein also works in the digital humanities, especially the study of Wikipedia. Her co-authored article “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” in the Journal of Holocaust Research has surpassed 35,000 views and attracted international media coverage.
Details and registration forthcoming.
March 12, 2024, at 11:00 AM PT Online Event
Soviet Antisemitism
Guest Speaker: Izabella Tabarovsky
Izabella Tabarovsky is the Kennan Institute Senior Advisor on Regional Partnerships and Programming. She oversees the Institute’s regional partnerships and programming, its independent journalism initiatives, and its Historical Memory initiative. She manages the Kennan Institute’s Russia File, Focus Ukraine, and In Other Words blogs, and co-hosts its Russia File podcast. She has coordinated Kennan’s U.S.-Israel working group on Russia in the Middle East, Kennan’s alumni conferences, and other initiatives and events. Her research expertise includes politics of historical memory, Russia's independent media, the Holocaust, Stalin’s repressions, and Soviet and contemporary left antisemitism.
Details and registration forthcoming.
April 18, 2024, at 1:00 PM Hybrid Event
Antisemitism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Guest Speaker: Christina Wirth
Christina Wirth, a Ph.D. student at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany, is the USC Shoah Foundation’s first Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Antisemitism Studies. She will be in residence at the Institute in April 2024. As part of the fellowship, Wirth will conduct research on Jewish survivors’ experiences of antisemitism in the immediate years after the Holocaust. This research is part of her broader dissertation project, entitled From ‘Displaced Persons’ to ‘Refugee’: Categorizing and Representing People in Transit (1944-1951).
Details and registration forthcoming.
Past Lectures
September 7, 2023, at 1:00 PM PT Hybrid Event
Why We Argue about Antisemitism Today
Guest Speaker: Dr. Dov Waxman
At a time when antisemitism is resurgent, arguments about it are increasingly common. This talk will discuss why the issue of antisemitism has become so contentious. The reason is not only because people strongly disagree about what is antisemitic when it comes to the highly charged Israeli-Palestinian issue, but also because there is no longer a shared understanding of what antisemitism is. Consequently, charges of antisemitism are hotly disputed nowadays, often accompanied by accusations of bad faith.
Dov Waxman is Professor of Political Science, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies, and the director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA. Professor Waxman's research focuses on the conflict over Israel-Palestine, Israeli politics and foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations, American Jewry’s relationship with Israel, Jewish politics, and anti-Semitism. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (Palgrave, 2006), Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019).