Antisemitism and Racism: A Shared History

In 2017 in Charlottesville, antisemitism and anti-Black racism converged as white supremacists, in a highly choreographed and violent protest against the removal of a statue honoring a Confederate general, carried Confederate flags and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” This convergence is not just a product of American history: its roots go far deeper. In this talk, Magda Teter, author of Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism, will explore the interplay between Christian theology and law to demonstrate how the theological framework of Christian supersessionism articulated in antiquity—and its subsequent application in law—led to the creation of social hierarchies and the legal exclusion of and denial of equality to Jews and Black people in modern times.

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (2005), Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (2011), Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023), and of dozens of articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Her book Blood Libel won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award, the George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Roland H. Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society. Teter has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Cullman Center at the NYPL, the NEH, and others. Teter is currently President of the American Academy of Jewish Research.

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