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The Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

Dec. 2, 2021

On Anti-Racism and Our Center

The tangled interrelationship of politics, religion, nationalism, and ethnicity are central to the Schusterman Center’s teaching and research concerning the State of Israel. “Race” and “Racism” carry different meanings and different histories in Israel and the United States. Our programming aims to illuminate these complexities and to highlight how these issues have played out over the course of Israel’s history.

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Programmatic focus

Following successful programming in 2020-21 such as “Protests, Panthers, and Politics: Rethinking Blackness in Israel” and “Performing Disability Israel” the center is invested in programming concerning questions of race and racism. One such program is the Studio Israel Series, which focuses on underrepresented Israeli artists. Our FY22 Studio Israel program will kick off with Raida Adon, an Israeli Palestinian artist and actress.
Our ongoing biweekly Schusterman Scholars Seminar regularly take up thorny questions of race and identity.
Dr. Shula Mola will join us in Fall 2021 as a postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Mola is an Ethiopian Israeli scholar and activist. This past summer she told her story to our Summer Institute (SIIS) fellows. In addition to her many personal accomplishments, she is one of the founders of and key activists in “Mothers on Guard” – a group of mothers who protest alleged police brutality against youth of Ethiopian origin. We expect that she will interact in important ways with the campus community and beyond.

Teaching

In fall 2021, Prof. Yuval Evri will begin his role as the Marash-Ocuin Chair in Mizrahi/Sephardi Studies and Assistant Professor in NEJS. He is a Mizrahi Jew of Color, from an Iraqi Jewish background. His courses and scholarship about Mizrahi Jewry will bring a crucial focus to this understudied topic. We also anticipate that he will be an active presence on campus and beyond, adding much-needed complexity to questions of race and racism in the Israeli context.
A number of courses taught by Schusterman faculty grapple with issues of racism and anti-racism, including the following regular offerings: NEJS 136a, Israeli Popular Culture: Language, Gender, and Politics; NEJS 141b, Human Rights: Law, Politics, Theology (cross-listed with Politics, IGS, LS); NEJS 154b, Israel; Dilemmas of Identity; NEJS 157b, Arab-Jewish Modern Thought and Culture; NEJS 178a, Love, Sex, and Power in Israeli Culture (taught in Hebrew); and NEJS/WGS 110a, and Sexual Violence in Film and Culture.
Our doctoral students are drawn from different regions, religions and ethnicities.
Our faculty teach Israeli and Jewish History in broad context, referencing Islamic civilization, colonialism, nationalism and the vicissitudes of liberal democracy. As such, they exemplify how issues like race should be studied within a global comparative framework.
While not related to racism as such, we are proud to note that our faculty member, Prof. Ilana Szobel, is pioneering the subject of Disability Studies at Brandeis employing Israel as a case study.

Summer Institute for Israel Studies (SIIS)

We have reworked our recruitment program to focus on Minority Serving institutions both domestically and abroad. Both the faculty and our SIIS fellows reflect wide-ranging diversity. This past summer, we had two participants from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Howard University and Bluefield State College). We plan to continue recruitment efforts among minority populations as we work to ensure a diverse body of participants within the Summer Institute.
We have increased the amount of time paid to Israel’s minority populations within our curriculum, and hired scholarly consultants to ensure that we are offering our fellows a comprehensive understanding of Israel’s minority populations.

Other

Our associate director for administration, Rise Singer, is chair of the Brandeis University Staff Advisory Council (BUSAC) and plays a significant role with the committee and others in efforts to address allegations of systemic racism on campus. She recently served on the committee to hire a new head of Public Security.
Yehudah Mirsky and Rise Singer have been tapped to serve on the search committee for the Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Our faculty is often called upon by the media to speak on issues relating to the rise of antisemitism at home and abroad, and other issues connected to racial and intergroup relations.
Our faculty meet regularly with student groups to discuss the complicated questions of identity with which they are contending. We expect that the appointment of Professor Evri and the presence in our midst of Dr. Mola will enhance these discussions.