New Research by Professor Rebecca Kobrin on October 7 and Its Impact on Israeli Students at Columbia

We are proud to share recent research by IIJS Co-Director Professor Rebecca Kobrin, examining the events and aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. This work offers critical insight into the surge of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents on U.S. college campuses, including the experiences of Israeli students at Columbia.

Her study examines how the October 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing campus activism affected Israeli students’ sense of belonging at Columbia University, arguing that the concept of “anti-Israelism” is essential to understanding these dynamics fully. 

Read her research in detail, linked below:

Anti-Israelism, Social Media and the College Campus in the Aftermath of October 7: The Case of Columbia

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

Israeli Organizers Discuss the Democracy Movement Post-October 7 in IIJS Webinar

On April 28, the IIJS hosted a webinar with Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur (Tel Aviv University) and Shany Granot-Lubaton (NYC Hostages Families Forum), titled “Fighting for Democracy: Reflections on the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement from the Post-October 7 World.”

The past year has been unprecedentedly dramatic and tumultuous for Israeli citizens. Ever since the newly elected far right-wing government declared its plan for a judicial overhaul in January 2023, there have been protests throughout the country—creating the largest protest movement in Israel’s history and one of the most persistent in recent global history—culminating after 9 months with the October 7th attack. With global democratic deterioration, and the upcoming contentious elections in the US, two leading Israeli organizers, Ronit Levine-Schnur and Shany Granot-Lubaton, recount the challenges, successes, and failures of the democratic protest movement, reflect on the impact of October 7th events on the movement, and offer insights on fighting for democracy.

Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur is a Senior Lecturer at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She was the co-founder and the leader of “The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy” until Oct. 7th. Currently she is a co-leader of “The Day After the War Forum”.

Shany Granot-Lubaton is the leader of the New York City protests for Israeli democracy (the largest protest community outside of Israel). Right after Oct. 7th she co-founded the Hostages Families Forum in NYC. She was previously the chief of staff and spokesperson of the former head of the labor party, MK Shelly Yechimovich and deputy director of the “Darkenu” movement.

The event was organized and moderated by Maya Gayer - Journalist, Fulbright fellow in Public Humanities and MA student in the Oral History Program at Columbia University, who is building an oral history archive of the Israeli democracy protest movement as her thesis project.

This webinar is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Appel families.

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Adam Teller Delivers First Spring Lecture of Israel-Hamas War Webinar Series

On Sunday, January 28, at 4:00 PM, the IIJS hosted a webinar with Adam Teller, titled “Jewish Hostages in Captivity: A Historical Perspective.” This webinar is the first entry of Spring 2024 in our Israel-Hamas War Webinar Series.

Adam Teller is Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Brown University in the USA. Born in London, he studied at Oxford University and completed his graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in the history of the Jews in eastern Europe. He taught at the University of Haifa in Israel for 15 years before moving to Brown in 2010.

Dr. Teller has written widely on the economic, social, and cultural history of the Jews in early modern Poland-Lithuania. He has written three books on the subject and edited (or co-edited) a further four. He is the author of many academic articles in English, Hebrew, Polish, and German.

His newest book, Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, which deals with how the Jewish world organized in order to help the waves of Polish Jewish refugees that spread out across Europe, Asia, and North Africa following the Khmelnytsky uprising of 1648, was published by Princeton University Press in 2020.

Dr. Teller was a member of the core academic team that created the exhibit at the prize-winning POLIN Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and is currently a member of the museum’s Academic Advisory Council.

Dr. Teller’s lecture is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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Derek Penslar Joins IIJS for Third Installment of Webinar Series on Israel-Hamas War

On Sunday, December 3, Derek Penslar (Harvard University) joined the Institute to continue our webinar series on the Israel-Hamas war, presenting a talk titled “American Jews and Israel: From Love to Anguish” and answering audience questions. Dr. Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. His most recent book, Zionism: An Emotional State (2023), examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement’s history.

This event is the third in our webinar series on the current Israel-Hamas war, which has featured “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv,” with Avi Shilon, and “Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus,” with Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis.

Dr. Penslar’s talk is available to view in full below.

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is the director of undergraduate studies within the history department and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and is also affiliated with Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. His books have engaged with a variety of approaches and methods, including the history of science and technology (Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of the Jewish Settlement in Palestine 19870-1918, 1991), economic history (Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe, 2001), military history (Jews and the Military: A History, 2013), biography (Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader, 2020), and the history of emotions (Zionism: An Emotional State, 2023). In two co-edited volumes, Penslar has brought Jewish studies into conversation with postcolonial studies (Orientalism and the Jews, [2005] and Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Theory and the Historiography of Zionism [2023]). Penslar’s current interests lie in international history, and he is writing a book about worldwide reactions to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Penslar’s teaching reflects his interests in integrating Jewish history into global contexts. In addition to teaching courses in modern Jewish history and the history of Zionism and Israel, he teaches courses on nationalism, military history, and the history of emotions. He brings these themes into his General Education course on war and anti-war movements in the modern world.

Before coming to Harvard, Penslar taught at Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Israel Studies. He has taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He has held research fellowships in Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Penslar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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IIJS Panel Grapples with Campus Antisemitism

On Sunday, October 22, the IIJS and the American University Program in Jewish Studies co-hosted a webinar with academics Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis, alongside Columbia student Rebecca Massel: “Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus.”

Their discussion spans a wide variety of relevant topics, such as defining antisemitism, understanding its relationship to anti-Zionism, American campus culture, and the importance of free speech. The panel also sets aside a significant portion of the session to answer student and general audience questions. This event is the second in our webinar series on the current Israel-Hamas war, which began last week with “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv,” featuring Avi Shilon and Rebecca Kobrin.

This discussion is available to view in full below.

Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety of courses in Jewish civilization. Her awards include AU’s highest faculty award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year (2007). Pamela Nadell’s books include America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019), named Jewish Book of the Year by the Jewish Book Council. Reviewed in the New York Times, America’s Jewish Women was praised as “a welcome addition to the American historical canon.” Past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell’s other titles include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889–1985 (Beacon Press, 1998). She consults for museums including the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. She lectures widely, frequently appears on podcasts, and has written for, among others, the Washington Post, The Conversation, and Hadassah Magazine. In 2017, she testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses. She is currently writing a history of antisemitism in America.

Britt P. Tevis is the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research examines the intersections between Jews and American law and her work has appeared in American Jewish History, American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American History. She has held fellowships at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.

Rebecca Massel is a sophomore at Columbia College studying political science. Currently, she serves as the Vice President of Communications for Columbia Barnard Hillel, where she works with and supports the Jewish community. She is also a senior staff writer for the Columbia Daily Spectator, reporting on University-related matters, like demonstrations on campus, school policies and statements, and, most recently, campus responses to the Israel-Hamas War.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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Avi Shilon Discusses Attack on Israel and War in Gaza

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is devastated by the horrific attacks on Israel. We extend our deepest sympathies and support to the families of those who lost their lives and condemn the abhorrent slaughter and kidnapping of civilians. As it has since its inception in 1950, the Institute stands in solidarity with the people of Israel.

On Sunday, October 15, Avi Shilon—a journalist, historian, and political scientist who has taught at Columbia, NYU, Tsinghua University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev—joined us for a webinar, “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv.” This talk was moderated by Rebecca Kobrin, IIJS Co-Director and Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History. Dr. Shilon discussed the terrorist attacks that took place in Israel on October 7th, as well as Israel’s response and impending military campaign, before answering audience questions.

This discussion is available to view in full below.

Avi Shilon has taught with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University and the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University. He also has been a postdoctoral fellow at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and at Tsinghua University, China. He has published the books The Decline of the Left-Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (2020), Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016) and Menachem Begin: A Life (2012) as well as articles in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal. Dr. Shilon also writes for the Ha’aretz newspaper. He received his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel in 2015.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, in Columbia University’s Department of History, where she teaches in the field of American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She is also the Co-Director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research, teaching, and publications engage in the fields of international migration, urban history, Jewish history, American religion, and diaspora studies. She is one of the principal investigators leading the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, an award-winning map that visualizes the demographic and spatial changes wrought in New York City between 1850 and 1940.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

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