Academics from universities around the world gathered at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, this month for an intensive two-week program examining contemporary antisemitism and how the subject is researched and taught in higher education.
The 12th annual Summer Institute for Curriculum Development in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, organized by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), brought together professors, researchers, university faculty and advanced doctoral candidates from a range of academic disciplines.
Previously held in Oxford for more than a decade, the program moved to Cambridge this year as ISGAP expands its academic activity in the city. The institute already operates a Fellowship Training Program on Critical Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination and Human Rights at Cambridge’s Woolf Institute.
Over the course of the Summer Institute, participants examined contemporary antisemitism through historical, political, sociological, legal and technological perspectives, while working to develop university courses, research projects and teaching materials that can be taken back to their respective institutions.
The program covered subjects ranging from Holocaust distortion and anti-Zionist antisemitism to Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, foreign influence in higher education, discrimination law, online radicalization and the emerging impact of artificial intelligence on antisemitism.
Among those taking part in the program were scholars and practitioners from academic and public institutions internationally. Speakers included former Soviet dissident and human rights activist Natan Sharansky; Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr.; Professor Dan Michman of Yad Vashem; Professor Amos Nadan, director of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University; Professor Miriam Wagner of the Woolf Institute; Professor David Patterson; Joël Kotek; and ISGAP founder and Executive Director Dr. Charles Asher Small.
For ISGAP, the Summer Institute is intended to address what it sees as a continuing gap in the systematic academic study of contemporary antisemitism. Rather than focusing solely on lectures and discussion, participants are expected to translate the work undertaken during the program into new courses, research and educational initiatives at their home institutions.
“Cambridge is becoming an increasingly important center of ISGAP’s academic work,” Small said. “By bringing together our flagship Summer Institute, faculty fellowships and the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, we are building the scholarly infrastructure and global network required to study contemporary antisemitism with methodological rigor, intellectual independence and sustained academic attention.”
This year’s program also coincided with a broader expansion of ISGAP’s academic infrastructure in Cambridge, including the appointment of Professor Lesley Klaff as the organization’s Director of Academic Engagement.
Klaff, formerly a Senior Lecturer in Law at Sheffield Hallam University, has written extensively on Holocaust inversion, campus antisemitism, antisemitism in British politics, the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism and the relationship between antisemitism and equality law. She is also an Affiliate Professor at the University of Haifa and an affiliate faculty member at Gratz College in Pennsylvania.
Alongside her new role at ISGAP, Klaff will remain Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, a double-blind, peer-reviewed academic journal published by Academic Studies Press. ISGAP and the journal have established a new affiliation designed to expand the publication’s international reach and support its transition to open access.
The journal will retain its existing editorial leadership, independent peer-review process and editorial independence. Under the arrangement, ISGAP will also support efforts to increase its publication schedule from two to as many as four issues per year.
“The affiliation between ISGAP and the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism represents an important opportunity to strengthen the academic foundations of this field,” Klaff said. “The journal will retain its full editorial independence and commitment to rigorous peer review while benefiting from ISGAP’s international scholarly network and support for open-access publication.”
Klaff and the journal’s Deputy Editor, Daniel Allington of King’s College London, also presented sessions during the Summer Institute examining the journal’s history and its role within contemporary antisemitism scholarship.
A further component of the Cambridge program brought together participants in ISGAP’s Faculty Fellowship Training Program on Holocaust distortion and global antisemitism, funded in part by the Claims Conference. Fellows come from disciplines including law, psychology, political science, public health, religious studies and education.
The fellowship places an emphasis on practical academic and educational outcomes, with participants developing curricula, campus initiatives, educational programs and institutional approaches aimed at addressing Holocaust distortion and inversion.
The combination of the Summer Institute, faculty fellowship and journal affiliation reflects ISGAP’s effort to build a more permanent academic framework around the study of contemporary antisemitism, connecting research and publication with the training of academics who can introduce the subject within universities internationally.
The Cambridge Summer Institute concluded on August 7.
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