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Academia, Racial, and Social Justice, and Abrahamic Coexistence

As I write this essay reflecting on Dr Atalia Omer’s brilliant, and deeply principled, Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians, a petition is circulating among academics that touches on issues at the heart of Omer’s book. Over 600 scholars of Jewish and/or Israeli Studies have now signed the petition in support of Dr Liora Halperin, Associate Professor of International Studies, History, and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. This came after news broke that the University of Washington had stripped Halperin of her endowed Chair in Israel Studies, as a result of objections from a right-wing donor. This donor expressed disapproval of Halperin’s critiques of the Israeli state, and therefore pressed for the return of the five million dollars she had provided for the Chair. Fortunately, Halperin retains her tenured professorship, and will continue her outstanding research, teaching, and service. But her allies insist that the university must honor the commitment they made to her chair and the resources that came with it. This recent major controversy within the Jewish and Israel Studies worlds is merely the latest among a long history. Consider a different case from December 2020. The Forward (formerly known as the Jewish Daily Forward) reported on the standoff between Dr Marc Dollinger, Professor of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, and Brandeis University Press. After the murder of George Floyd earlier that year, Dollinger wrote an updated preface for his 2018 book, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s. The preface included Dollinger’s statement on the increasing integration of white Jewish-American citizens in the United States and their consciousness of how that “reinforced elements of white supremacy in their own lived experience”. Brandeis University Press then received complaints about Dollinger’s words, and engaged the author so that he could edit the preface in order to print the new edition. He declined out of principle and the two parties decided to part ways, with Dollinger seeking a different publisher for his widely read book. While these cases are high-profile and visible, and many are not, Halperin and Dollinger’s experiences are nonetheless emblematic of the pressures that