11 Fall 2024 Two years ago, we established a partnership with Robert Kraft and his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. Financial support from Mr. Kraft and other donors allowed us to develop a set of programs aimed at students, higher education leaders, and future professionals aspiring to lead Jewish organizations. The “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism in Higher Education for Campus Leaders” brings together deans of academic and student affairs, DEI campus leaders, deans of admissions, provosts, and presidents from institutions across the U.S. for short workshops, conferences, and four-day intensive institutes to help prepare academic leaders to shape discussions and programs related to the place of Jews on their campuses. It is clear from the first set of programs, all of which have been oversubscribed with wait lists, that knowledge of Jewish history, Judaism, Jewish peoplehood, diversity within the Jewish community, Israel, and the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is very limited, even and especially among those responsible for ensuring a safe and rich educational environment for all their students, Jews included. The early success of this initiative’s programming has brought requests from disparate groups across the country for us to adapt our program to their needs. These groups include local and regional Jewish Federations to national Jewish organizations to boards of trustees of colleges and universities to leaders and teachers in K-12 schools. A second program, supported generously by our collaboration with the Kraft family, focuses on Brandeis’s master’s degree program in Jewish Professional Leadership. This program, which for sixty years has served those who wish to lead Jewish organizations in both the U.S. and abroad, will expand its curriculum to include modules on antisemitism and anti-Zionism and become available on-line to serve a much larger population and produce more and better prepared future Jewish leaders. A third program, focused on our undergraduate students, is an endowed program that provides funding to faculty to offer new courses that introduce students to antisemitism as the subject relates to their respective disciplines. Through these discipline-based courses, students who otherwise would have never studied antisemitism are engaged in courses in varied disciplines beyond Jewish Studies. Courses so far have focused on the history of antisemitism in theater; the persistence of antisemitism in France, taught in French; antisemitism in the plays of Shakespeare; the power of antisemitism in inter-war Germany; and the intellectual history of antisemitism. Aside from the benefits to our students, these courses expand our faculty’s knowledge of antisemitism. And, judging by the positions taken by many faculties across the country, especially at our most elite institutions, preparing new courses like these should serve to dampen extremism and ignorance of the subject. A fourth program supports the research of the Cohen Center for the Study of Modern Judaism. The Cohen Center has conducted numerous detailed studies of many American Jewish communities over the past four decades and has begun recently in-depth studies of antisemitism among Jews and non-Jews on college and university campuses. The Center’s work is of great interest to the general American population and the American Jewish community, and it informs our work with higher ed and K-12 leaders. Our other university research centers and institutes that focus on Jewish history, education, gender, and Israel Studies play a leading role in the programming of lectures, panels, and conferences, helping to explain the nuance and complexities of the Israel-Hamas conflict. And finally, and I should add very importantly, we seek greater collaborations with Israeli institutions of higher education to counter the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that is picking up steam at many American universities and within professional academic associations. Our goal is to increase exchanges of faculty, post-docs, and doctoral students to help redefine the narrative on our campuses about Israel, Israeli academics, and the conflict. We also want to provide American academics the opportunity to be in residence in Israel and expand their understanding of the country, its rich, diverse, and complex culture, and what it is like to live in this Middle Eastern neighborhood. To that end, we are committed to working closely with Fulbright Israel and any other organization that can help strengthen relations between the American and Israeli academies. In the United States, while there are legal protections in place for Jewish students who face discrimination and harassment, there are many organizations and individuals who are all too eager to test the boundaries established to create a safe learning environment. In addition, universities routinely face legal challenges to their speech policies and student conduct codes. We hope that attorneys throughout the world will come to the defense of the students in need of support, and will engage their American colleagues in meaningful discussions about the boundaries of free expression. In closing, because of strong ties to the American Jewish community since its founding, along with our unambiguous statement about October 7 which was issued
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