General Public

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.

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.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel last October 7, the term “settler colonialism” has become central to public debate in the United States. This talk will survey the history and implications of a concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, which is shaping the way a generation thinks about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues.

Lecture by Jonathan Laurence. The Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires have had a strikingly similar relationship with the modern state. Sunni and Catholic authorities experienced three major shocks and displacements—religious reformation, the rise of the nation-state, and mass migration — which shaped how each religion would come to experience the state’s political jurisdiction. Whereas early Christianity and Islam were characterized by missionary expansion, religious institutions forged in the modern era are primarily defensive in nature.

Lee Yaron—Haaretz investigative reporter and author of 10/7 A Hundred Human Stories

Joshua Cohen—Pulitzer Prize Winning Author & Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies & English, Yale University

Eliyahu Stern—Professor of Modern Jewish History, Yale University

Moderated by Maurice Samuels—Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French, Yale University