Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is renowned worldwide for its distinguished doctoral programs and scholarship on mass atrocities. That reputation makes it all the more troubling that since Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, the center’s programming and scholarship have consistently advanced an antizionist narrative that treats Jewish sovereignty as criminal. By institutionally endorsing antizionism, the Strassler Center raises serious concerns about academic rigor, ideological activism, and the misuse of scholarship to demonize Israel.

This narrative was visible at a panel titled “Antisemitism in American Law and Life.” During the Q&A, a student asked panelists Marjorie Feld and Jonathan Feingold to define Zionism. Feld replied that she does not consider herself to be a Zionist and repeated the myth that Zionism was solely responsible for the exiling of Palestinians in 1948. The student expressed dissatisfaction with the answer. Feingold emphasized precision in discussing Zionism, yet did not provide a definition himself. When a panel on antisemitism cannot clearly define Zionism, the result is conceptual ambiguity rather than clarity. 

Modern political Zionism emerged in late nineteenth-century Europe in response to violent antisemitism and Jewish statelessness. At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, the movement formally defined its goal to establish a legally secured home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. While scholars have debated its historical evolution, this foundational definition is enshrined within mainstream discourse. Yet, recent Strassler Center events and scholarship have erroneously framed Zionism as settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide—all central pillars of the contemporary antizionist worldview.

Late into the Israel-Hamas War, Strassler Center professor Elyse Semerdjian published an article discussing “Gaza’s particular settler colonial configuration,” along with dishonestly presenting Israel’s founding as fundamentally unjust. Semerdjian further delivered an explicitly antizionist convocation speech at her prior institution while serving as the faculty advisor for the brazenly pro-Hamas Students for Justice in Palestine. 

Former visiting assistant professor Zoé Samudzi has similarly declared that “Israel is an apartheid state is probably the mildest criticism you can make about it at this point,” promoted the deadly exchange libel, and collaborated with the pro-Iranian regime activist group, CodePink. When these ideological narratives seep into its scholarship, the credibility of the Strassler Center’s faculty erodes significantly.

The center’s sponsored programming further legitimizes antizionism. At a September 2025 event titled “Defining Antisemitism and Protecting Academic Freedom After October 7,” Clark professors Frances Tanzer and Johanna Vollhardt ignorantly alleged that the IHRA definition stifles free speech. This is in spite of the explicit clarification found within the definition that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” Rather than presenting the various interpretations and their critiques, this discussion ignored the facts and emphasized a narrative as the truth, lending institutional legitimacy to political positions.

Earlier that year, they sponsored a screening of The Palestine Exception, a film that distorts the history of Zionism and glorifies the 2024 student encampment movement. During the post-screening discussion, a Strassler Center PhD student dismissed a question about Jewish safety, coldly retorting that “it’s not about us right now.” For an institution dedicated to Holocaust studies, this rhetoric is deeply troubling. 

This follows the resignation of the center’s executive director, Mary Jane Rein. In her scathing WSJ commentary, Rein described being heckled and threatened by Strassler Center PhD students after organizing an external lecture by an Israeli reservist who was a first responder on October 7. She also recounted being admonished by a senior Clark administrator for using her Strassler Center title in connection with the event, writing, “I can no longer function effectively at an academic institution that thinks shouting down a speaker is tolerable but introducing a speaker whose views people disagree isn’t.” 

As antizionism continues to embed itself within the fabric of American universities, institutions that dedicate themselves to the study of the Holocaust must be actively confronting these libels, not proudly enabling them. 

At the Strassler Center, this means ending the practice of silencing dissenting voices, emphasizing the pursuit of knowledge over narratives, and enforcing existing anti-harassment policies. In this regard, the administration must properly investigate the well-documented instances of blatant bias, intimidation, and demonization that have been permitted to take place at the Strassler Center. 

This is not about restricting academic freedom; it’s about combating ideological indoctrination posing as academic scholarship. If this conduct is not addressed, students will leave not as critical thinkers but as products of a predetermined narrative—and Clark University will have failed in its mission.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)