Brandeis University President's Initiative on Antisemitism

Dr. Rachel Fish teaching

Upcoming Events and Webinars

2025-2026 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.
Antisemitism, an American Tradition

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

Register now

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.

Regional Higher Ed Programs

Pacific Northwest Leadership Institute on Antisemitism in Higher Education

March 11-12, 2026

Portland, OR