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.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism was established in 2010 by Birkbeck, University of London and Pears Foundation.
We are the only university centre in the UK dedicated to the study of antisemitism and one of only two in Europe. The Institute is renowned internationally for its innovative research and teaching.
Our work is framed by our conviction that antisemitism is a distinctive form of racism. Through our research and public activity we establish points of connection between the problem of antisemitism and the challenge of racisms more broadly.
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.
Why don’t we acknowledge that there are different ways of measuring the prevalence of anti-Jewish prejudice? On the one hand, reports of recorded antisemitic incidents have risen, and many Jews are fearful. But surveys of the British population’s attitudes to Jewish people show a steep decline in prejudice. And Jews are more concerned by racism generally than antisemitism specifically, which could be a building block for the anti-racist politics that is so badly needed.
The period after 1945 saw the formal delegitimization of antisemitism and racism, as well as the emergence of antiracism as a new moral and political universal. In this seminar, Sonali Thakker focuses on the UN and UNESCO’s attempts in the mid-twentieth century to redefine the scientific and social scientific meaning of race.
Kenan Malik explores the erosion of the barrier between far-right and mainstream ideas, the resurgence of racism and what our response should be.
This report shows how antisemitism is a stain on UK society but current responses to tackling the problem are not working. The report calls for a new approach to both thinking about and combating antisemitism; one that is based on building alliances between Jewish people and other racialised minorities and employs a 360-degree anti-racism.
Stephen Frosh and Devorah Baum draw on their recent experience of editing the ‘Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Jewish Studies’ to explore the interplay between these two disciplines, engaging with: Histories; Judaism and the Bible; Antisemitism and the Holocaust; and Jewish culture.
In this talk, Omer Bartov will explore the transformation of Zionism from a movement of Jewish emancipation and liberation into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism, exclusion and violent domination of Palestinians.
Matthew Bolton explores how UK anti-discrimination law has constructed Jewish identity as a mode of ‘ethnicity’ and encouraged the essentialisation or dehistoricisation of Jewish identity.
The founding principle of the Institute is that the study of antisemitism is vital to understanding racialization, racism and religious intolerance.
