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 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. RSVP Below.

—

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.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Moderator) is Sady and Ludwig Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and  Professor, Viterbi Family Endowed Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. Stein’s books, articles, and pedagogy have won numerous prizes, including the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Jewish Book Awards, three National Jewish Book Award Finalist Awards, Best Historical Materials Award from the American Library Association, Judaica Reference Award from the Association for Jewish Libraries, and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic.

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.

This event will be livestreamed on the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies YouTube channel here.