The Scholar Lab on Antisemitism gathers six scholars from different academic backgrounds, including history, digital humanities, communication, musicology, religious studies, Judaic studies, Holocaust studies, and media studies, who all examine the topic of antisemitism from their respective disciplinary and methodological perspectives. You can learn more about the scholars and their projects below.

Meet Our Scholars

Mehnaz Afridi, PhD
Professor of Religious Studies and director of The Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College

Dr. Afridi's scholar lab project explores the role of Muslims during the Holocaust, examining historical and religious anti-Semitism in the Arab world and their consequences that led to the denial and relativism of the Holocaust in this part of the world.

Jonathan Judaken, PhD
Spence L. Wilson Chair in Humanities, Professor of History at Rhodes College

Dr. Judaken’s scholar lab project focuses on the completion of the concluding chapter of his upcoming monograph entitled Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism: Confronting Modernity and Modern Judeophobia

Josh Kun, PhD
Professor and Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication at the University of Southern California

Dr. Kun’s scholar lab project is a piece of creative non-fiction criticism-- recorded as an audio essay with musical accompaniment—that explores anti-Semitism and Jewish hatred through sound and music. 

Sara Lipton, PhD
Professor of History, Stony Brook University

In her scholar lab project, Dr. Lipton will draw on a study of the representation of Jews in medieval Christian art and an examination of how medieval preachers talked to their flocks about art, vision, and the material world to explore references to Jews in medieval sermons.  

Todd S. Presner
Michael and Irene Ross Professor and Chair, Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies

For his scholar lab project, Dr. Presner is using a range of computational methods in the field of natural language processing to study how hundreds of survivors remember antisemitism in the late 1930s and early 1940s. 

Jeffrey Veidlinger, PhD
Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan

Dr. Veidlinger’s scholar lab project examines what some of the most prominent and influential writers and thinkers in the historical western tradition have written about Jews.