“No dogs, radios, bicycles or picnics.” This enigmatic list posted on a series of wrought iron fences made clear — though without explanation — what items were once barred from the “Backs” in Cambridge, England. Honoring this proscription was the small cost of using the private meadows owned by the colleges next to the river…
I just received a text from my guitarist, urging me to change our band name from “Iraqis in Pajamas” to something else — anything else, as long as it has no Middle Eastern connotation. A young Muslim woman at the local university was just attacked and hit in the head, he informed me, and the…
In her essay “The Cowardly Reasons Jewish Organizations Won’t Speak up against Trump Appointees,” Dr. Lila Corwin Berman speaks powerfully about a moment of moral failure in the Jewish community. If her critique is right, Jewish leaders today are repeating one of the worst mistakes of history: saying and doing nothing in the face of…
At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum wondered why everyone’s talking about “white supremacy” these days, rather than just talking about “racism.” Had he wondered this, oh, I don’t know, in June, this might have been a contrarian but useful point: In one understanding “white supremacy” is the entire system, encompassing everything from racist beauty standards to…
After a spike in bias incidents since the election of Donald Trump, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Sunday that he would be ordering the state police to create a special unit to investigate hate crimes, according to a report in DNAInfo. “Today I’m directing [state agencies] to put together a special team of…
In the wake of the election, hate crimes against Muslims have skyrocketed. Now more than ever, it’s our duty as Jews to stand in solidarity with and in defense of Muslim Americans. This is true because Islamophobic hatred is inherently an unacceptable injustice. It’s also true because we know what it is to feel targeted,…
Anti-Semite? Zionist? Champion of the alt-right? In the hours after media provocateur Steven Bannon’s elevation to a senior position in president-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet, commentators and civil rights organizations slammed the move. Bannon is a complex figure. He served as a Navy officer and also worked for Goldman Sachs. He also helped run a domed…
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…
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