There has long been debate and disagreement over whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic. In recent months, this debate has become particularly intense and often acrimonious. In an effort to tackle this contentious and timely question in a serious, scholarly, and nuanced manner, Professor Ethan Katz (UC Berkeley) and Professor Dov Waxman (UCLA) will engage in a two-part, public conversation: “Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitic?”

Part 1. Anti-Zionism on Campus: Legitimate Protest or Dangerous Hate Speech? will take place Thursday, February 1st on the UC Berkeley campus (location TBD) as well as live-streamed. Moderated by Sue Fishkoff.

Part 2. The Debate Over Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Understanding the Terms and the Stakes will take place Thursday, February 15th on the UC Los Angeles campus (Bunche Hall, Room 10383) as well as live-streamed. Click here for more details.

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Ethan Katz is faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Center for Jewish Studies. He is a historian of modern Europe and the Mediterranean, with specialties in modern Jewish history and the history of modern France and its empire. He is also Chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Life & Campus Climate and Co-director of the Antisemitism Education Initiative. His major publications include The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard, 2015) (winner of a number of honors including the National Jewish Book Award); Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times, co-edited with Ari Joskowicz (UPenn, 2015); and Colonialism and the Jews (Indiana, 2017), co-edited with Lisa Moses Leff and Maud S. Mandel.

Dov Waxman is the director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. He is a Professor of Political Science and The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair of Israel Studies at UCLA. Professor Waxman’s research focuses on the conflict over Israel-Palestine, Israeli politics and foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations, American Jewry’s relationship with Israel, Jewish politics, and anti-Semitism. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (Palgrave, 2006), Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019).

He has also been published in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Foreign Policy, The Forward, and Ha’aretz, and he is a frequent commentator on television and radio.

Sue Fishkoff was the longtime editor of J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Previously she worked as a national correspondent for the JTA Jewish news service, focusing on Jewish identity and culture. Her freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Hadassah Magazine and the London Jewish Chronicle. She lectures widely on her books, and on Jewish identity in North America. From 1991-1997, she was a staff writer for the Jerusalem Post, serving as the paper’s New York bureau chief from 1991 to 1994.

Ms. Fishkoff received her BA in history from Cornell University and her MA in Soviet politics from Columbia University. She is the author of The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch (Schocken Books, 2003) and Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority (Schocken, October 2010.) She lives in Oakland, CA.