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Building alliances between Jews and non-Jews to combat racism and antisemitism becomes ever more difficult. The vexed political relationship between the dominant expressions of anti-racism and anti-antisemitism has been years, arguably decades, in the making. The politics of Israel/Palestine presents one obstacle. At the time of writing, the war on Gaza has lasted for nine months. Israel is accused of war crimes and genocide, not least by anti-racist advocacy groups and activists. Meanwhile the majority of Jews affirm an attachment to Israel, and many Jews and non-Jews assert that Israel suffered an antisemitic terror attack on October 7th and that global protest against Israel is tainted (or driven) by antisemitism.
The obstacles in the way of integrating Jews into an anti-racist politics are also conceptual. The legacies of colonialism and enslavement and the impact of structural racism all provide reasons why academic writing and anti-racist activism often figure racism as a Black/White binary. Yet this perspective can impede acknowledgment of a plurality of racisms, including antisemitism. Arguably, the specificity of Islamophobia is another casualty of a Black/White binary. The discrimination and stigmatization suffered by Gypsies, Roma and Travellers and by East European immigrants in western Europe underlines the importance of interrogating how we conceive racism.
Bringing together perspectives from the social sciences, history and advocacy, this conference will explore the grounds on which to build a coherent and encompassing anti-racist politics and examine how to overcome the problems that stand in its way.
Speakers include: Shabna Begum (Runnymede Trust), Emily Dische-Becker (Diaspora Alliance), Joseph Finlay (University of Southampton), Ben Gidley (Birkbeck, University of London), Leah Jordan (Rabbi, Kehillah North London), Liam Liburd (Durham University), Naaz Rashid (University of Sussex), Becky Taylor (University of East Anglia), Emilie Wiedemann (University of Glasgow), Gary Younge, (University of Manchester), Nira Yuval-Davis (University of East London).
Please find full programme available for download here.
We are grateful for the support of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University Berlin.