ACROSS THE US — Universities across the United States have launched academic centers, programs, and task forces focused on studying and combating antisemitism, including new initiatives at New York University, Baruch College, Emory University, and the University of Washington. The expansion includes tenure-track jobs, postdoctoral positions, and fellowships, with some initiatives backed by wealthy donors and others announced with the stated aim of mitigating the risk of lawsuits and federal investigations.
In November 2023, NYU announced the creation of an academic center for the study of antisemitism backed by a seven-figure donation, describing it as a new, cross-disciplinary approach to combat "age-old hatred." Baruch College announced a new laboratory to "bolster research, advance pedagogy, and promote community engagement aimed at countering antisemitism." Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. envoy to combat antisemitism, is planning to launch a new policy institute dedicated to countering antisemitism at Emory University.
Gratz College in Pennsylvania has launched what it describes as the world's only PhD program in antisemitism studies. The University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Brandeis University have expanded existing initiatives with new antisemitism-focused programs and hires. Several universities have also launched antisemitism task forces to examine Jewish life on campus, many led by faculty or administrators who are Jewish but lack scholarly expertise in Jewish history or antisemitism.
At the University of Washington, a group of faculty who believed the campus had become too anti-Israel initiated the creation of a new center to address antisemitism. The center is led by a co-chair of a university antisemitism task force who is a public health professor rather than a scholar of Jewish studies, with other members drawn from the law and business schools. The center is not formally affiliated with the university but appears to use university resources for operations such as processing donations. It has hosted two public events featuring pro-Israel speakers and launched a newsletter.
"They're undermining expertise and substituting it with ideology even though they claim to be doing exactly the opposite," said Susan Glenn, a professor of history and Jewish studies faculty member. "The initiative is one of many self-organized faculty-led groups and the university does not endorse opinions these groups may express," a spokesperson for the University of Washington said.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into the University of Washington's handling of antisemitism following an off-campus bake sale by a student group for the "Lebanese resistance."
Lila Corwin Berman, director of the center for American Jewish history at NYU, said the recent proliferation represents a shift in how the subject is institutionalized. "What's new are these institutional structures, this field-building around the idea of foregrounding antisemitism as a specific thing to be studied outside of a history department or a literature department or a religious studies department," she said. "They're making a public-facing performance about dealing with antisemitism – and the calculation is not being made through rigorous evaluation of scholarly expertise," Berman added.