Having devoted much of my time in a French doctoral program at New York University to studying antisemitism, it has been a strange experience to see the Maison Française of NYU now regularly hosting talks on what as recently as the 2010s felt like a deeply unchic subject. When I was in the program, Jewish Studies had turned away from the “lachrymose,” and the rest of academia was shall we say lukewarm where the study of anti-Jewish oppression was concerned, in keeping with progressivism generally.

A part of me is pleased to see that topics I knew to be important are now recognized. But there’s a broader context, one in which it is not necessarily good—for Jews or generally—that antisemitism is now a hot topic. I mean there’s the obvious reason it’s bad: the spiking antisemitism that has inspired the general public to take an interest in what had once seemed (to those not paying attention) a thing of the past. But there’s more to it as well.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, a feature by Stephanie M. Lee, “The Fight Over Antisemitism Studies,” describes tensions surrounding the emergence of centres and even degree programs aimed at researching and combatting antisemitism. At just the moment when, at Trump’s behest, American higher ed is otherwise chucking Oppression Studies programs and activist scholarship of the researching and combatting variety, there’s this one sort of woke that is for some reason permitted, and it’s the one where Jews and only Jews do count. As with Trump’s general anti-antisemitism doings, it is not always entirely clear they are beneficial to Jews.

There’s a lot of interest in the Chronicle article, but spot the strangeness of this passage:

“At some of the country’s most prestigious universities, the antisemitism-research apparatus is taking the form of new centers. In November 2023, NYU announced that it was establishing the Center for the Study of Antisemitism with a seven-figure gift ‘at a moment that cries out for new study, new insights, and new solutions to combatting this age-old hatred.’ The moment came less than six weeks after the Hamas attacks and a day after three students sued the university for allegedly tolerating anti-Jewish discrimination. That December, following a flurry of Gaza protests, the University of Michigan announced it would start the Wallenberg Institute, named for a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. In January 2024, the University of Toronto said it would build an antisemitism-studies lab.”

The inclusion of a university in Canada in this list of prestigious American universities would seem to be attributing to Trump........

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