The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism is a centre of innovative research and teaching on antisemitism, racialization and religious intolerance. It contributes to knowledge and understanding, policy formation and public debate.
Latest Update: Welcome to the website of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, formerly the Pears Institute.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (formerly the Pears Institute), was established in 2010 by Birkbeck, University of London and Pears Foundation.
Our founding principle informs our vision and our work: that the study of antisemitism is vital to understanding other forms of racialization, racism and religious intolerance.
We are an internationally recognized centre for innovative research and teaching.
Our scholarship contributes to public debate on antisemitism, racialization and religious intolerance and we provide expertise and advice to a wide range of institutions in the UK, Europe and the wider world.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism is both independent and inclusive.
The Reformation marked a hugely significant turning point in Europe’s history. Taking Kenneth Austin’s path-breaking study, ‘The Jews and the Reformation’ (Yale University Press, 2020) as its starting point, this event, part of Birkbeck Arts Week, explores the place and significance of Jews in the Reformation, as well as the impact of the Reformation on Europe’s Jews.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism responds to two current and troubling developments. First, the rising threat from antisemitism in Europe and the United States. Second, the growing disconnect between opposition to antisemitism and advocacy for universal human rights and antiracist politics.
Antisemitism often mixes a sexualized horror regarding Jews with a specific kind of sexual titillation. Drawing on both Critical Race Theory and Porn Studies, this paper examines what these disciplines can add to the study of antisemitism, and places antisemitism within the larger history of race, gender, and sexuality.
How we memorialise and study the past is being questioned today in new ways. The global reverberations of the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020 and the growing demands to ‘decolonise’ knowledge from within and without higher education challenges anyone who seeks to engage with a contentious present and troubling past.
This book charts the fraught relationship between Jewish internationalism and international rights protection in the second half of the twentieth century.
How can we defend academic freedom, repudiate antisemitism on campus and protect Jewish students? David Feldman argues that the universalist principles that underpin equality law provide the best means to combat Miller and others. They are also the basis on which Jews and other minorities can act in solidarity.
For the last four years there has been an intensified debate—at least in Europe and North America—about the ethics and politics of historical comparison. Michael Rothberg offers preliminary reflections on this spate of recent controversies while also situating them in relation to selected earlier disputes.
We build alliances to promote knowledge and share understanding, making our work ever-more relevant in a world threatened by populisms and conspiracy theories from the political left and right
Professor David Feldman, Director
