In this seminar, Emilie Wiedemann will focus on the preparations for the UN World Conference Against Racism held in September 2001 and the advocacy of diaspora Jewish NGOs within this context. She will consider how these Jewish NGOs’ claims were perceived to be at odds with the politics of other anti-racism groups in Durban. Finally, she will delve into the concrete political impact of this experience on Jewish advocacy in international anti-racism spaces after 2001 – specifically on efforts to define antisemitism in the new millennium.
Emilie Wiedemann is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, where she works on the British Academy-funded project ‘A New Democratic (Dis)Order: Race, Identity, and Political Mobilisation in France and the UK, c. 1970-Present’. She completed her PhD in History at Birkbeck, University of London in 2023, which explored ‘Jewish internationalism and the international politics of opposing antisemitism, 1960-2005′. Her research focuses on international Jewish politics and advocacy in anti-racism spaces and the history of identity politics in the British and international contexts.