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.
‘Antisemitism’ and ‘Racism’ are highly contested terms today, with little consensus on their definitions, and even less on how they may or not relate to each other. This talk will argue that there have been two distinct modes of anti-racism in Britain since the 1960s with their roots in the creation of the first Race Relations Act in 1965.
Over the last few years, it has been impossible to ignore the steady resurgence of xenophobia. The European migrant crisis and immigration from Central America to the United States have placed Western advocates of globalization on the defensive, and a ‘New Xenophobia’ seems to have emerged out of nowhere.
Leading scholars in a variety of fields trace the history and scholarly debates around a key concept. Each chapter presents an original argument, points to avenues for further research and provides a method of investigation.
This book charts the fraught relationship between Jewish internationalism and international rights protection in the second half of the twentieth century.
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.
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.
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.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism explores the pattern of antisemitism both today and in the past. We connect research on antisemitism to the wider study of racialization and intolerance.
