This afternoon Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld from Indiana University sent me a letter he wrote to Yale’s President co-signed by dozens of academics from all over the world, expressing their opposition to the university’s decision to close YIISA.
In my column on Friday, I mistakenly wrote that YIISA was the only institute in a North American university dedicated to the study of anti-Semitism. As it turns out, there is another one at Indiana University run by Prof. Rosenfeld. I had heard of the center, but was under the impression that it was still in the planning phases. So sorry for the error and congratulations to Indiana University for doing the right thing. I think I’ll try to scrape up a copy of “Breaking Away,” to celebrate.
Before I give you the letter, I want to call your attention to a deeply depressing blog post by a recent Yale grad named Matthew Knee at Legal Insurrection about the atrocious behavior and politics of the Jewish students at Yale. I read this post on Friday and I still haven’t snapped out of the funk it put me into.
Here are a few representative passages but I urge you to read the entire entry:
Those who point out that the PLO condemned a YIISA conference on global anti-Semitism fail to note that the Jewish community at Yale did not come to YIISA’s defense in any significant way. While I found many references to the controversy searching the Yale Daily News web site, I found no examples of the organized Yale Jewish community standing up for YIISA.
I recall talking with other Jewish students about YIISA, including some who were directly involved. The complaints I heard were consistent. Yale students consider the study of anti-Semitism of the sort YIISA examined to be a “right wing” pursuit. They complained that YIISA was too focused on Europeans leftists, Israel-haters, and particularly, Muslims.
This was unsurprising considering the far left nature of the Yale Jewish Community. While I was on campus, Yale Friends of Israel (YFI), Yale’s allegedly pro-Israel student organization, had so big a tent that one of their leaders told me, at the height of the controversy over “The Israel Lobby,” that even Walt and Mearshimer’s views should be welcomed as a form of pro-Israel viewpoint. This was met with approval by nearby YFI members.
Now here is the text of the letter with the signatories.
June 12, 2011
President Richard C. Levin
President’s Office
Yale University
PO BOX 208229
New Haven, CT 06520-8229
Professor Peter Salovey
Provost’s Office
Yale University
Warner House, Room 107
1 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Dear President Levin, Dear Provost Salovey:
As scholars who recently participated in a major conference on antisemitism at Indiana University, we were astonished to learn of Yale’s decision to eliminate theYale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA). Among North American universities, YIISA has been a pioneer in advancing research on contemporary manifestations of antisemitism. It has done much good work. The list of speakers it has hosted is diverse and includes many of the leading scholars in the field. Its publication program, while still young, already boasts several notable titles. The potential for YIISA to build on these attainments and achieve still more in the future is undeniable. What, then, explains Yale’s decision to suddenly terminate an institute with such a record?
While we are unfamiliar with the grounds for your decision, the immediate closure of YIISA strikes us as peremptory and unwise. Surely a way can be found to help YIISA continue its impressive record of accomplishments and, at the same time, help it remedy whatever problems your review may have identified.
At a time when antisemitism is once again a social reality of increasing concern, universities would do well to encourage the scholarly work of institutes like YIISA rather than shut them down. We urge you to reconsider your decision and thereby enable Yale University to remain a leader in studying one of the critical problems of contemporary culture. To do otherwise will deprive the scholarly community of an intellectual resource of high energy and proven effectiveness. Especially at this time of resurgent antisemitism, Yale’s surprising move to close YIISA sends precisely the wrong message.
Respectfully,
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Professor of English and Jewish Studies
Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies
Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
OTHER SIGNATORIES
Dina R. Spechler
Associate Professor of Political Science
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
R. Amy Elman
Professor
Chair, Political Science
Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo, MI 49006 US
Kemal Silay
Professor of Central Eurasian Studies;
Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Chair;
Director, Turkish Studies Program;
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Matthias Küntzel
Political Scientist and author
Hamburg, Germany
Research Associate of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Sidney Rosenfeld
Professor Emeritus of German Language & Literature
Oberlin College
Oberlin, OH
Rifat Bali
Publisher, Libra Books
Istanbul, Turkey
Research Fellow at Alberto Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and Culture (Paris)
Jamsheed K. Choksy
Professor of Iranian Studies, Central Eurasian Studies, History, India Studies, International Studies, Islamic Studies
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Member, United States National Council on the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
Kenneth L. Marcus
Executive Vice President and Director
The Anti-Semitism Initiative
Institute for Jewish & Community Research
3198 Fulton St., San Francisco, CA 94118
Paul Bogdanor
Independent scholar and author
London
England
Bernard Harrison
Emeritus E.E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah
Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Sussex
Bruno Chaouat
Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies ,
Associate Professor of French,
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN
William I.Brustein,
Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and History
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Catherine Chatterley
Founding Director
Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA)
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History
University of Manitoba,
Canada
Stephen Katz
Professor, Borns Jewish Studies Program and the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Emanuele Ottolenghi
Senior Fellow – Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Washington, D.C.
Author
Dina Porat
Head, the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry
Former Head, the Stephen Roth Institute
for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism
The Alfred P. Slaner Chair in Anti-Semitism and Racism incumbent
Tel-Aviv University, POB 39040, Ramat-Aviv
Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel
Ilan Avisar
Associate Professor
Film & TV Dept.
Tel Aviv University
Jean Axelrad Cahan
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Director
Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Elhanan Yakira
Professor, Department of Philosophy
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Israel
Balazs Berkovits
Independent scholar and author
Budapest
Hungary
Zvi Gitelman
Professor, Political Science
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Andrew Sloin
Assistant Professor of History
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana
Alejandro Baer
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Universität Bayreuth
Germany
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish Studies
University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA
Anna Sommer Schneider
Research Assistant
Institute for the Study of Modern Israel
Emory University, Atlanta
Eirik Eiglad
Ph.D. candidate and author
History and Philosophy
University of Oslo
Oslo, Norway
Matthias Lehmann
Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Paul Berman
Independent scholar
New York City
Author of Flight of the Intellectuals and other books
Gunther Jikeli
International Institute Education and Research on Antisemitism,
London, UK
Dr. Szilvia Peremiczky
Director, Hungarian Jewish Museum, Budapest
Senior Lecturer, National Rabbinical Seminary and Jewish Studies University, Budapest
Senior Lecturer, Eötvös Lóránd University of Arts and Sciences, Budapest
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