Jewish Identities and Antisemitism Programming Series
- Campus Unit: Diversity Training and Education
- Updated:
This series of four events started in October 2021 with a
program featuring individuals with a diversity of intersecting Jewish
and other identities talking about their lived experiences. In the three sessions during spring semester 2022, we
grounded our investigation of Jewish identity and experience of
antisemitism in an exploration of history, identity, and opportunities
for solidarity.
We hope that this series will validate and affirm Jewish
members of the UMD family and give all UMD community members greater
understanding and more tools to recognize and counter antisemitism when
we see it.
Antisemitism, like other forms of oppression, traffics in
stereotypes, generalities, and assumptions. These tropes are all around
us—in literature and popular culture and in everyday conversations on
the street or on our campus. When left unexamined and unchallenged,
anti-Jewish tropes can in extreme cases lead to violence and in more
everyday circumstances cause microaggressions and other tensions that
degrade the vibrant and inclusive climate we want UMD to be.
What’s more, as this programming series explored,
anti-Jewish bias and antisemitism work hand in hand with other forms of
oppression, including anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant bias, and
homophobia, to name just a few. Addressing all forms of oppression are integral to
ODI's work of helping the university achieve its diversity, equity and
inclusion goals, and this programming will play an important role.
We hope you will watch the recordings below.
This panel sought to understand the multifaceted nature of Jewish identity and the range of experiences and identities among Jews. Panelists: Ari Israel, MA, Executive Director of the UMD HillelNilaya Knafo, Senior Program Assistant, United States...
Topics: Identity Hate & bias Anti-oppression
No One Controls the World: The Nefarious Origins and Dangerous Outcomes of Anti-Jewish Tropes
Campus Unit: Diversity Training and Education
From speculation about Jewish space lasers to complaints about George Soros’ influence to the Colleyville hostage-taker’s certainty that a New York rabbi could intervene on behalf of a Federal prisoner, the subtext that Jewish people have...
Topics: Identity Hate & bias Anti-oppression
Constructions of Race and Jewishness: How Antisemitism Shapes and is Shaped by the Racialization of Jewish People
Campus Unit: Diversity Training and Education
Recently, Whoopi Goldberg stirred up a great deal of controversy when she said that the Holocaust was “not about race.” In the aftermath, historians and Jewish organizations pointed out that for the Nazis, “Jewish” was a race. But Jewish people of...
Topics: Identity Hate & bias Anti-oppression
Divided We Fall: Why Fighting White Nationalism Requires Confronting Antisemitism, Anti-Black Racism and Anti-Immigrant Bias
Campus Unit: Diversity Training and Education
In 2018 a White Nationalist killed 11 worshippers at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh because he believed Jews were working to “replace” white Americans with Black and brown immigrants. That horrible moment is just one recent example in a...
Topics: Identity Hate & bias Anti-oppression
Topics
Type
Campus Unit