Brandeis University President's Initiative on Antisemitism

Dr. Rachel Fish teaching

Upcoming Events and Webinars

Fall 2025 Webinars for Higher Education Administrators and Leaders

Please join us for these Fall 2025 virtual seminars open to higher education leaders and administrators currently working in departments related to student and academic affairs, DEI and legal affairs, communications, development, president, provost, and deans' offices, etc. Sessions are held "meeting-style" with an opportunity to ask questions toward the end.
Registration for each session required and closes 2 hours before start time. Free of charge.
Closed Classrooms: An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues

Thursday, December 4, 2025, 12-1 PM ET

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Trump is waging war against higher education. While most Americans don’t support the attack, they share his distrust. This lack of faith in our universities is attributed to campus antisemitism and political lopsidedness among faculty, especially when it comes to teaching contentious issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite these frequent and long-standing allegations of bias, however, remarkably little hard evidence has ever been adduced to prove them. We recently discovered just that evidence when we analyzed a database of 27 million college syllabi. In this short talk, we will review our findings and address how college administrators might encourage more responsible and broadminded curriculums, build a university culture of robust liberal debate, and begin winning back public trust.

Presented by Professors Yuval Avnur (Scripps College, Claremont) and Stephanie Muravchik (Claremont McKenna College)

Prof. Yuval Avnur headshotProf. Stephanie Muravchik headshot

Yuval Avnur is Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College, Claremont. He is author of numerous works on skepticism, contemporary issues concerning the spread of information, the history of philosophy (especially David Hume and Blaise Pascal), and philosophy of religion. Originally from Israel, Avnur moved to the US at age 7, and now lives in Claremont with his wife (an illustrator) and two kids.

Stephanie Muravchik teaches in the Government Department at Claremont McKenna College. She is the author of "American Protestantism in an Age of Psychology" (Cambridge, 2011) and the co-author, with Jon A. Shields, of "Trump’s Democrats" (Brookings, 2020) and "The Republican Civil War: What Liz Cheney’s Wyoming Tells Us About a Divided American Right" (forthcoming, Oxford). She is also an associate fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

Antisemitism, an American Tradition

Thursday, January 15, 2026, 12-1 PM ET

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Image of book cover for "Antisemitism, an American Tradition

Pamela S. Nadell will discuss her new book, "Antisemitism, an American Tradition", which recounts the powerful story of antisemitism in America and how it has shaped the lives of Jews for almost four centuries.

Called “the book that the world needs now” (The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer), this “vital and unsettling new book” (Religion News Service) shows that freedom in America always came with conditions. When 23 Jews landed in New Amsterdam, Governor Peter Stuyvesant tried to expel them. Eventually, Jews would face restrictions on holding office, admission to schools, and employment in industry. Their cemeteries were vandalized; their synagogues bombed. Much later, white nationalists marching in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us.” A gunman murdered eleven worshippers on a Shabbat morning members at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue building. Another gunman, boasting that he did it for Palestine, murdered a young couple leaving the Capital Jewish Museum.

Recounting this fraught history, "Antisemitism, an American Tradition" explores how Jews stood up against this hate, battling back though the law, associations, alliances, and sometimes with their fists.

headshot of Prof. Pamela S. Nadell

Presented by Professor Pamela S. Nadell, the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University. Her book "America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today" won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s Everett Family Foundation “Book of the Year” and was translated into Hebrew. The Wall Street Journal named her new book, "Antisemitism, an American Tradition" (W.W. Norton) to its October 2025 best books list.

A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell is a member of the Advisory Board planning the rebuild of Pittsburgh’s The Tree of Life. However, to her chagrin, she may best be known for testifying before Congress in the hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Webinars for School Educators and Educational Leaders

Please join us for this Fall 2025 virtual seminar open to school educators and educational leaders. Sessions are held "meeting-style" with an opportunity to ask questions toward the end.

Registration for each session required and closes 2 hours before start time. Free of charge.