Addressing Antisemitism
March 27, 2023
Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,
This week, we will welcome special guest Kenneth S. Stern, an internationally renowned expert on hatred and antisemitism and director of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate. I encourage you all to attend his talk, “Antisemitism and Binary Thinking: Campus Culture and the Future of Democracy” at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 29, in Stirn Auditorium.
We must not underestimate the persistent problem of antisemitism and its profound impacts on our world. Many of you will be aware that antisemitism is on the rise, with Jews facing increased harassment and violence in the U.S. and globally. In addition to violence against Jews at synagogues and elsewhere, we see prejudice and discrimination against Jews being instrumentalized in political platforms worldwide. I imagine that most of us are also aware of the prevalence of antisemitic tropes in contemporary conspiracy theories, of social media as an amplifier of those tropes, and of the prominence of Holocaust deniers on social media and YouTube.