Taking as his point of departure the late Robert Wistrich’s 2013 essay “The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism,” Charles Small examines the long history of the hatred of Jews and the causes of its durability. He also elucidates the connections between old-fashioned European anti-Semitism—manifested as religious or racial prejudice—and its newer incarnations in radical Islam and in the anti-Zionism of the far left. Most troublingly, Small points to, and explains, Western academia’s unwillingness to confront these manifestations of anti-Semitism even as it produces much scholarship on its older forms, as well as on the anti-Semitism of today’s far right. (Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 46 minutes. Options for download and streaming are available at the link below.)
More about: Academia, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, History & Ideas