Keynote Lecture by Jeffrey Kopstein, Antisemitism on Campus: A New Survey from the University of California

18.11.2024

The outbreak of campus protest after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, renewed and intensified the long-standing debate over whether social activism that questions Israel’s existence, or that is even critical of Israel, simply masks a new form of antisemitism, and whether Jewish students and faculty confront a particularly hostile environment on campus. This lecture interrogates student attitudes on four large campuses at the University of California in the months before and after October 7th.  Based on an original survey, it explores the levels and correlates on antisemitic attitudes, whether universities are incubators of antipathy toward Jews, and the extent to which negative attitudes towards Jews have increased since the outbreak of the war.

Jeffrey Kopstein is Dean’s Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. In his research, Professor Kopstein focuses on interethnic violence, voting patterns of minority groups, antisemitism, and anti-liberal tendencies in civil society. These interests are central topics in his latest books, Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2018), Politics, Memory, Violence: The New Social Science of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2023), and The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future (Polity, 2024). He has held fellowships at Harvard University, Princeton University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the US Department of Defense, the Fullbright Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League.

The lecture starts at 5.30 pm. Please register for the event by e-mailing efbi@uni-leipzig.de. Location details will be sent upon registration.