As concern over antisemitism has grown in recent years, so too have debates over how to understand and combat it. The Routledge History of Antisemitism, now in paperback, offers fresh perspectives into what has been called the oldest hatred. It explores antisemitism’s history and manifestations, ranging from its origins to the internet.

In the years following the Holocaust, many in North America and Europe viewed antisemitism as a historical issue with little current importance. However, recent events show that antisemitism is not just a matter of historical interest or of concern only to Jews. Antisemitism has become a major issue confronting and challenging our world. This volume starts with explorations of antisemitism in its many different shapes across time and then proceeds to a geographical perspective, covering a broad scope of experiences across different countries and regions. The final section discusses the manifestations of antisemitism in its varied cultural and social forms. 

Join us for this critically important and illuminating discussion about the book’s insights into antisemitism featuring co-editor Mark Weitzman (World Jewish Restitution Organization) and contributors Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth) and Maurice Samuels (Yale). Samuel Freedman (Columbia) will moderate. A reception will follow the program. The book will be available for purchase and signing.

About the Speakers
Mark Weitzman is co-editor of The Routledge History of Antisemitism. He is Chief Operating Officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, the lead NGO working toward restitution of Jewish private and communal property seized during World War II. He is also the senior NGO member of the official U.S. delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Authority (IHRA), where he chaired the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial and the Museums and Memorials Working Group. He was the architect of IHRA’s adoption of the Working Definition of Antisemitism and the lead author of IHRA’s Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion. He wrote the monograph Jews and Judaism in the Political Theology of Radical Catholic Traditionalists, and his chapter on “Holocaust Denial and Distortion” will be published in the forthcoming Cambridge University Press History of Antisemitism.

Susannah Heschel is Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor and chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her books include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus; The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany; Jüdischer Islam: Islam und jüdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung; Jewish Studies and the Woman Question, written with Sarah Imhoff, and several edited books. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation, and five honorary doctorates from universities in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. 

Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he also directs the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Cullman Center Fellowship at the New York Public Library, he is the author of five books, including The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews; The Betrayal of the Duchess; and Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, published in Yale's Jewish Lives Series.  

Samuel Freedman (above photo: credit Gabriela Bhaskar) has been an award-winning author, columnist, and professor. A former columnist for The New York Times and a professor emeritus at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he is the author of the ten acclaimed books. The most recent of them, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, won the 2024 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. Freedman’s previous books include Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church; The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond; and Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. Four of his books have been listed among The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year. Jew vs. Jew won the National Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction and made the Publishers Weekly Religion Best-Sellers list.