Q&A with Charles Asher Small…Former YIISA director creates an academic network to expand the scholarly exploration of modern-day antisemitism

By Cindy Mindell

Charles Small

Last June, Yale University shut down the groundbreaking Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), the first and only such academic initiative in the U.S. A year after YIISA co-sponsored an international conference on campus, “Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity, Yale officials accused the program of a lack of academic rigor as the rationale for terminating the five-year-old program. (In its place, the university created the Yale Center for the Study of Antisemitism.)

YIISA founder and director Charles Asher Small may have left New Haven, but he has not closed up shop. Quite the contrary: he has begun to create a U.S. academic network that will continue YIISA’s work and expand the scholarly exploration of modern-day antisemitism in all its guises. The new endeavor — called the “Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy” (ISGAP) – is actually the revitalization of an organization that Small had established prior to the formation of YIISA.

Small will discuss “The Challenge of Global Antisemitism During a Time of Silence,” on Thursday, Nov. 8, 7 p.m. at Temple Sholom, 300 East Putnam Ave. in Greenwich. For information call (203) 869-7191.

Just before flying to Israel to present a talk on American foreign policy and the “Arab Spring,” at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, part of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Small spoke with the Ledger about his latest efforts.

Q: Tell us a little about the revitalized ISGAP?

A: We opened a head office in Midtown Manhattan, and have a new executive coordinator and a new program coordinator. Elie Wiesel

joined us as honorary president (see story p. 36).

We have opened programs at four North American universities: a series of events at Stanford, both its California campus and its Hoover Institution in Washington, D.C.; an interdisciplinary research seminar series at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus and at McGill University in Montreal; and a course on antisemitism, discrimination, human rights, and international law at Harvard Law School. We’re working on finding events in which to participate in Europe and Israel.

Q: How do you explain the lack of university programs in the U.S. dedicated to the study of contemporary antisemitism?

A: There’s a profound denial in the U.S. that permeates its major institutions, from the academy to serious media outlets and policy-makers. There is a wave of reactionary social movements that are taking control and power throughout the Middle East and, in this country, there is an assumption that this is part of a “spring” and a democratic movement.

As long as there are free elections, everybody is content, but free elections don’t mean democratic elections and democratic societies, where the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities are respected.

I believe that this is a catastrophe in the making.

What are the implications that the new president of Egypt is coming to meet with President Obama? Morsi is a man who believes in the most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes of Jews imaginable, including the stereotype that Jews are responsible for 9/11. Where is the red line in the U.S. for dealing with antisemitism, among policy-makers and scholars?

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