Jewish Historians Ditch Ivory Tower to Denounce Donald Trump
Image by Getty Images
Scholars usually avoid politics, content to plod around the stacks in the university library and write essays for obscure academic journals. But after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections, hundreds of Jewish historians signed an open letter pledging their opposition to many of the new leader’s ideas.
“We condemn unequivocally those agitators who have ridden Trump’s coattails to propagate their toxic ideas about Jews,” the statement read, in reference to the ‘alt-right’ and its anti-Semitic appeals. “More broadly, we call on all fair-minded Americans to condemn unequivocally the hateful and discriminatory language and threats that have been directed by him and his supporters against Muslims, women, Latinos, African-Americans, disabled people, LGBT people and others.”
Organized by David Biale, a professor at the University of California – Davis, the letter pledged the academics to fight the incoming administration.
“Hatred of one minority leads to hatred of all. Passivity and demoralization are luxuries we cannot afford,” it continued. “We stand ready to wage a struggle to defend the constitutional rights and liberties of all Americans. It is not too soon to begin mobilizing in solidarity.”
The letter included many prominent names on it — Susannah Heschel at Dartmouth, Paul Mendes-Flohr at the University of Chicago, Beth Wenger at the University of Pennsylvania, Shaye Cohen at Harvard and Maurice Samuels at Yale.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
