Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism

Yossi Kugler

Center for Law and Antisemitism at the Haim Striks Faculty of Law, College of Management

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 | 4:00 pm

Online

Anti-Israelism, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Israel’s Evolving View

This lecture traces the historical emergence of the Israeli perception that anti-Zionism constitutes a form of antisemitism. While much of the scholarly literature attributes this shift to the post-1967 era, when Israeli society became more traditional, Jewish-centered, and inclined to interpret criticism through a sense of isolation and siege, this study argues that the change began earlier. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, it shows that the identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism first took shape in the early 1950s, following the antisemitic and anti-Zionist campaigns in the Soviet bloc, rather than as a product of domestic ideological transformation. By examining Israeli press discourse, political speeches, and public debates from the 1930s to the 1970s, the article demonstrates that Israeli understandings of antisemitism evolved not in isolation but through engagement with global events. The findings challenge the prevailing assumption that the conflation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism was rooted mainly in internal developments and instead reveal how external threats and international antisemitic trends shaped Israeli attitudes.

Yossi Kugler is a historian of antisemitism, Holocaust memory, and Israeli society. He is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the director of the newly established Center for Law and Antisemitism at the Striks Faculty of Law, College of Management. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research and currently studies the views of Israeli leaders and intellectuals toward antisemitism, as well as the place of Holocaust memory in public discourse.

Pamela S. Nadell

American University

Wednesday, January 28, 2026 | 4:00 pm

Humanities Quadrangle (HQ)

HQ L01 and online

Antisemitism: An American Tradition

This event is a discussion of Nadell’s recent book, Antisemitism, an American Tradition, which is the first scholarly work since the publication of Leonard Dinnerstein’s Antisemitism in America, published in 1995, to address the complete history of American antisemitism and how it has shaped the lives of Jews for centuries. In her research, Nadell plumbs antisemitism in the United States, from the mid-seventeenth century, when Jews first arrived in New Amsterdam, to today, amidst increasing anti-Jewish rhetoric and hate crimes. Her work demonstrates how the persistence of old ideas about “evil Jews,” alongside new, antisemitic conspiracy theories and lies, have circulated throughout American history. Recounting this fraught history, Antisemitism, an American Tradition explores how Jews stood up against this hate, battling back though the law, associations, alliances, and sometimes with their fists.

Students who attend this talk will receive a copy of the book Antisemitism, an American Tradition. Contact Linda Maizels (linda.maizels@yale.edu) for more information.

Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University. Her book, America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s Everett Family Foundation “Book of the Year.” A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she is a consultant to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Museum, has testified multiple times before Congress, and lectures widely. Nadell lives in Maryland.

Magda Teter

Fordham University

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 | 4:00 pm

Online

On Jewish Suffering, Empathy, and the Need to Rethink Antisemitism

With antisemitism at the center of politics today and with a frequent conflation of the opposition to the State of Israel, known as antizionism, with antisemitism, Magda Teter will explore traditional scholarly approaches to antisemitism along with factors that historically shaped the habits of thinking about Jews to reconsider the nature of antisemitism and to rethink antizionism and hostility against Israel not only as products of modern conflict over land but also as ideas rooted in religious conceptions about Jews, Judaism, Jewish exile, and guilt and punishment.

Students who attend this talk will receive a copy of Blood Libels, Hostile Archives: Reclaiming Interrupted Jewish Lives. Contact Linda Maizels (linda.maizels@yale.edu) for more information.

Magda Teter is professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author and co-editor of several books, most recently, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023), and Blood Libels, Hostile Archives: Reclaiming Interrupted Jewish Lives (2025). She is currently President of the American Academy of Jewish Research.

Claire E. Aubin

Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism Postdoctoral Fellow

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 | 4:00 pm

Online

Imagining Evil: Immigrant Holocaust Perpetrators in American Media

The trope of the ‘Nazi neighbor’ has existed in the American media landscape since the end of the Second World War, appearing in films, books, television, and print journalism for more than eighty years. Real immigrant Holocaust perpetrators’ stories diverged significantly from their popular media representation, allowing historical inaccuracies to flourish. In many cases, this ‘imagined’ Nazi conforms much more closely to popular stereotypes of Nazism than to historical reality, reflecting American preoccupations with heroic self-representation in the post-Holocaust world.

This talk will examine the differences and similarities that exist between the imagined immigrant Holocaust perpetrator in America and his real-life counterparts, and how the perpetuation of a stereotype has prevented accurate historical understanding.

Claire E. Aubin is a historian of Nazism, Holocaust perpetration, and twentieth-century American culture, with a Ph.D. and LL.M. from the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral dissertation is the basis for a forthcoming monograph with Cambridge University Press, titled The Homeland: Nazi Perpetrators as Immigrants to America, and she is the host of the popular general history podcast This Guy Sucked.

Milan Singh

Director of the Yale Youth Poll

Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 4:00 pm

Online

Yale Youth Poll | Polling on the Prevalence of Anti-Israel and Antisemitic Views in the Electorate

Join YPSA and Yale Youth Poll (YYP) Director Milan Singh for a discussion about a new YYP poll, sponsored by YPSA and released last week, in which participants were asked questions about the prevalence of anti-Israel and antisemitic views in the electorate. The data suggests that younger voters are much more likely to hold anti-Israel views than older voters and much more likely to agree with antisemitic stereotypes. The poll also asked questions about participants’ attitudes on other issues, including the performance of the Trump administration, messaging on the One Big Beautiful Bill, and gender roles.

The Yale Youth Poll is an undergraduate-led research organization that operates with complete editorial and methodological independence. All polling activities, including questionnaire development, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of results, are conducted entirely by the undergraduate students behind the Yale Youth Poll. All findings and conclusions reflect solely the work and analysis of the Yale Youth Poll and do not constitute an official position of, nor are they endorsed by, any organization, including the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism and Yale University.

Arash Azizi

Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism Postdoctoral Fellow

Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | 4:00 pm

Zoom Webinar

Iranian Jews and Patriotic Opposition to Antisemitism (1950–1990)

In the course and aftermath of World War II, Iranian Jews took an active role in political organizing that was unprecedented. The war years had helped orient the Iranian political scene around the global categories of fascism and anti-fascism. Various forms of far-right Iranian political tendencies spouted antisemitism, while a broad front, including the newly established communist Tudeh Party of Iran, emphasized an anti-fascist identity. Many Jews joined Tudeh and other anti-fascist efforts as they fought off antisemitism. Iranian Jews and their various political tendencies also had an evolving relationship with Zionism, moving from a religious association with the Holy Land to a more political Zionism. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, left-leaning Iranian Jews often called for Iran’s recognition of the new state and built solidarity with progressive forces there while criticizing the policies of its leadership. At the same time, they were adamant that Iranian Jews belonged to Iran, and only a small minority of the community migrated to Israel. This talk will focus on a common thread throughout these efforts: opposing antisemitism on the basis of an integrative Iranian patriotism. Iranian Jews asserted both parts of their identities, as Iranians and Jews, confronting exclusionary antisemitism and all other narratives that sought to paint them as not belonging to Iran properly.

Arash Azizi is a historian of modern Middle East and global history of the twentieth century with a focus on social and political movements. He has a PhD from New York University and is the author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions and What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom. His upcoming Counterweights: Iran, Israel, and the Battle for the Middle East will be published by Public Affairs. His peer-reviewed articles have been published in Middle Eastern Studies and International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. He has previously taught at New York University, Clemson University, and Boston University. 

Zoom link
Poster

Annette Wieviorka

French National Centre for Scientific Research

Thursday, October 23, 2025 | 4:00 pm

Humanities Quadrangle (HQ)

136

Tombs. Autobiography of my Family

The Fortunoff Video Archive and the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism are delighted to announce a lecture by renowned scholar Annette Wieviorka, a senior researcher emeritus at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Wieviorka is a scholar of twentieth-century Jewish history, in particular the Holocaust, and her varied works have been profoundly influential, notably her book The Era of Witness, which was published in translation in 1998 by Cornell University Press. Wieviorka has also been a volunteer organizer and interviewer for the Fortunoff Archive’s affiliated taping project in Paris and has served as an honorary advisory board member for decades.

In her lecture, Wieviorka will present a work in progress, acknowledging that she has been “thinking about this book for about forty years, a biblical generation.” During the pandemic, the project gathered steam as she began collecting extensive documentation about her family—including testimonies. As this family archive began to take shape, Wieviorka initially planned to write a biography of her grandfather, Wolf Wieviorka, a Yiddish writer and journalist murdered in Auschwitz. However, her work evolved from a singular textual “tomb” for one family member into a history of her entire family, the maternal as well as the paternal sides. In her lecture, Wieviorka will offer her incisive, assured point of view on what we can learn from this “autobiography of a family.”

Annette Wieviorka is a senior researcher emeritus at the CNRS. She is the author of many works on the history of the Holocaust and its memory, in addition to the history of communism. Her works include Déportation et génocide. Entre la mémoire et l’oubli (1992, 2003, 2013); L’ère du témoin (1998, 2013); Maurice et Jeannette. Biographie du couple Thorez (2010; 2016). Her intellectual journey was the subject of a book of interviews with Séverine Nikel: L’heure d’exactitude. Histoire, mémoire, témoignages (2011).

Location: HQ 136 and on Zoom:
Poster

Pavel Brunssen

Research Associate and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University

Wednesday, September 10, 2025 | 4:00 pm

Zoom Webinar

The Making of “Jew Clubs”: Performing Jewishness and Antisemitism in European Football and Fan Cultures

Why do non-Jewish football fans chant “Yid Army” or wave “Super Jews” banners—especially in support of clubs that are not Jewish? The Making of “Jew Clubs” explores how four major European football clubs—FC Bayern Munich, FK Austria Vienna, Ajax Amsterdam, and Tottenham Hotspur—came to be seen as “Jew Clubs,” even though they have never officially identified as Jewish.

In this transnational study, Pavel Brunssen traces how both Jewish and non-Jewish actors perform Jewishness, antisemitism, and philosemitism within European football cultures over the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources—from fan chants and matchday rituals to media portrayals and club histories—the book reveals how football stadiums have become unexpected stages for negotiating memory, identity, and historical trauma.

Offering a new approach to Holocaust memory, sports history, and Jewish studies, The Making of “Jew Clubs” shows how football cultures reflect and reshape Europe’s conflicted relationship with its Jewish past.

Dr. Pavel Brunssen is a Research Associate and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University. Brunssen’s research interests include antisemitism, antigypsyism, memory cultures, European soccer, and fan cultures. He holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Michigan, where he received the Marshall Weinberg Prize for his dissertation on “The Making of ‘Jew Clubs’: Performing Jewishness and Antisemitism in European Soccer and Fan Cultures.” Brunssen also earned a graduate certificate in Judaic Studies and a Graduate Teacher Certificate from the University of Michigan.

Webinar Registration
Poster

Annual YPSA Conference

Wednesday, April 30, 2025 | 4:00 pm to Thursday, May 1, 2025 | 5:30 pm

Humanities Quadrangle (HQ)

L02

Antisemitism and the Crisis of Liberalism

Since the American and French Revolutions, liberal democracy has always gone hand-in-hand with greater rights and opportunities for Jews. Conversely, times of crisis for liberal democracy—the Dreyfus Affair in France, Weimar Germany, our current moment—have been accompanied by rising antisemitism. This conference brings together leading scholars and thinkers to explore the relationship between Jews and liberalism historically as well as the role that antisemitism is playing in debates about liberalism today.

The conference made possible by a generous grant from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund and the Betty MacMillan Center for International Studies at Yale, as well as the Jason M. Folk Memorial Fund.

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration; the Program in Jewish Studies; the Department of French; and the Whitney Humanities Center.

Conference Program

Poster

Jonathan Judaken

Washington University

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 | 5:00 pm

Zoom Webinar

Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism

This talk will give an overview of Jonathan Judaken’s new book, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism (Columbia University Press, 2024). The book is at once a philosophical reflection on key problems in the analysis of anti-Semitism and a history of its leading theories and theorists. Judaken explores the methodological and conceptual issues that have vexed the study of Judeophobia and calls for a reconsideration of the definitions, categories, and narratives that underpin overarching explanations. He traces how a range of thinkers have wrestled with these challenges Judaken argues against claims about the uniqueness of Judeophobia, demonstrating how it is entangled with other racisms: Islamophobia, Negrophobia, and xenophobia.

Jonathan Judaken is the Gloria M. Goldstein Chair of Jewish History and Thought and Chair of the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of some fifty academic articles on the history of existentialism, anti-Semitism, racism, critical theory, and on post-Holocaust French Jewish thought. He has written, edited, or coedited seven books, including Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (2006), Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context (2012) and The Albert Memmi Reader (2020).

He has visited both Israel and South Africa as a Fulbright Senior Specialist (2011 and 2013) and he was previously a scholar-in-residence at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2006–7). He was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at Harvard (2000) and at the College of Charleston (2019).

Webinar registration