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concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
@concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
360 followers 570 following 270 posts
We believe that the fight against antisemitism cannot be separated from the struggle against all forms of oppression.

Learn more and join us:
https://concernedjewishfaculty.org

Our statements:
https://www.concernedjewishfaculty.org/statements
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concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social · Nov 21
The MA Antisemitism Commission has approved its final report conflating Judaism with Zionism.

We respond: "The Commission has done more to fuel rising authoritarianism and antisemitism than to create the conditions that promote Jewish safety"

www.concernedjewishfaculty.org/commission-s...
CJFS Commission Shadow Report | Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
www.concernedjewishfaculty.org
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
jfrejnyc.bsky.social
The right to protest in this country is sacrosanct & must be protected. It is especially irresponsible to offer an authoritarian government still more tools that can be used to criminalize protest. Read our joint statement opposing the anti-democratic buffer zone bills introduced in the NYC Council.
Jewish Organizations Urge City Council to Reject Anti-Democratic…
Jewish New Yorkers warn that Council Speaker Menin and Council Member Dinowitz’s proposed legislation threatens to erode free speech protections in New…
www.jfrej.org
February 9, 2026 at 3:57 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
The state that brought us "Don't Say Gay" is now expanding to "Don't Say West Bank"

This is completely ludicrous.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Florida bill seeks to ban use of ‘West Bank’ in schools and state agencies
The bill would mandate use of the biblical term ‘Judea and Samaria’ after a similar effort passed in Arkansas
www.theguardian.com
February 9, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
margaretlitvin.bsky.social
After a year of Trump's cynical exploitation of Jewish fear, this should all be obvious, if it wasn't before. Yet the local pushers of IHRA and anonymous denunciation hotlines aren't stopping. Insta reel below; if you prefer to read, here's the essay again: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...
February 7, 2026 at 4:40 AM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
joelhs.bsky.social
I have a new essay about reading Hannah Arendt in the age of ICE deportations, and what we are really debating when we debate appropriate uses of Holocaust memory in contemporary times. religiondispatches.org/2026/02/05/f...
The Ferocity of Responses to Tim Walz's Anne Frank/ICE Comments Are Revealing
When Minnesota Governor Tim Walz invoked Anne Frank while criticizing ICE deportations in his state, the backlash was immediate and fierce. Walz, who earned a master’s degree in Holocaust education, s...
religiondispatches.org
February 6, 2026 at 5:09 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
From @joelhs.bsky.social

"The dispute over Governor Walz’s remarks is therefore not really about Anne Frank at all. It’s about whether Holocaust memory is allowed to function as a warning about how states govern populations they deem disposable. "

religiondispatches.org/2026/02/05/f...
The Ferocity of Responses to Tim Walz's Anne Frank/ICE Comments Are Revealing
When Minnesota Governor Tim Walz invoked Anne Frank while criticizing ICE deportations in his state, the backlash was immediate and fierce. Walz, who earned a master’s degree in Holocaust education, s...
religiondispatches.org
February 6, 2026 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
jpygold.bsky.social
In 7 days . . . @arielleangel.bsky.social @peterbeinart.bsky.social @fadiqu.bsky.social @dovekent.bsky.social @academicsforpeace.bsky.social @concernedjfaculty.bsky.social @splcenter.org @jfrejnyc.bsky.social @ifnotnowmovement.org @rabbis4ceasefire.bsky.social

Register: www.bit.ly/jewishleft
Conference on the Jewish Left, Feb. 12, 2026 at Boston University http://www.bit.ly/jewishleft
February 5, 2026 at 9:19 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
“That reminds me of Anne Frank,” Rachel Blumberg, president and CEO of the center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “There’s a kindred bond between our residents being Jewish and seeing the place that the Haitians have gone through.”

www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-senio...
Jewish seniors offer to hide carers as 350,000 Haitians face deportation from US
CEO of Florida aged care home says residents, some of them Holocaust survivors, share 'kindred bond' with Haitian staff, who will lose right to work and live in US from Tuesday
www.timesofisrael.com
February 5, 2026 at 8:51 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Please join us next Thursday at BU for the Conference on the Jewish Left, with keynote by @peterbeinart.bsky.social and a full program of speakers and workshops!

Registration still open: www.bu.edu/cura/recent-...
February 4, 2026 at 8:22 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Our co-founder @margaretlitvin.bsky.social speaks with @academicsforpeace.bsky.social on why "record and report" surveillance tactics are the wrong way to fight antisemtism and other forms of prejudice.

www.instagram.com/reel/DUV_w83...
@academicsforpeace on Instagram: "Are schools making anyone safer by policing Israel speech? Prof. Margaret Litvin (Boston University) breaks down why surveillance and “record and report” tactics sile...
29 likes, 0 comments - academicsforpeace on February 4, 2026: "Are schools making anyone safer by policing Israel speech? Prof. Margaret Litvin (Boston University) breaks down why surveillance and “re...
www.instagram.com
February 4, 2026 at 8:11 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Stephen Shalom urging NJ to reject IHRA definition of antisemitism: "Trumpian authoritarianism is not good for anyone, but especially is not good for Jews. It creates precisely the kind of environment in which antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of racism flourish."

www.nj.com/opinion/2026...
I’m a Jew, and N.J.’s antisemitism bill threatens free speech in the name of protecting me.
The IHRA definition declares it antisemitic to call Israel’s actions genocidal or apartheid, putting the state in direct conflict with findings from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Isra...
www.nj.com
February 4, 2026 at 8:07 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
the-rac.bsky.social
It’s only because of our community that we’re able to sustain progress like this over time. Mark your calendar for our second-annual Jewish Justice Giving Day on 👉🏼February 10👈🏼 — a moment to help us bend the arc of justice even further. www.facebook.com/TheRAC/posts...
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
It’s only because of our community that we’re able to sustain progress like this over time. Mark your calendar for our second-annual Jewish Justice Giving Day on 👉🏼February 10👈🏼 — a moment to help us....
www.facebook.com
February 4, 2026 at 7:02 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
"As we remember the Holocaust, it’s required to ask: What do we do when the learning, remembering and commemorating aren’t enough? What do we do when people in need are within our reach? Do we act? Or do we let our memorials and memories become hollow?"
February 4, 2026 at 12:32 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Ben Ratskoff @bratskoff.bsky.social on analogies between ICE-inflicted terror and Anne Frank:

“If you are going to go around and say, ‘Everything you’ve learned here is completely unavailable to you for understanding current events,’ I mean, what is the point?”

religionnews.com/2026/01/27/w...
Walz's Anne Frank comment shows how Holocaust remembrance has become contentious
(RNS) — Educators and museums are conflicted on whether the lesson of the Holocaust should be understood as a tragedy with universal implications for humankind, or one more narrowly, pertaining to the...
religionnews.com
February 3, 2026 at 10:40 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Timothy Snyder on Vance working with extremist group Blood Tribe to whip up anti-Hatian sentiment:

"We confront no historical analogy, but actual twenty-first century Nazis who took action in the public sphere, shaped the public conversation, and are getting the policy outcome that they desired."
timothysnyder.bsky.social Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 9d
In Springfield, Ohio, people are preparing in advance of a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, the city is 2 or 3 days from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis.
snyder.substack.com/p/ethnic-cle...
Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio?
Nazi Lies in Vance's America
snyder.substack.com
February 3, 2026 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
wolvendamien.bsky.social
Please read this extremely thoughtful & careful post on Tim Walz, Anne Frank, & the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from Martin Shuster, philosopher, Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, former Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow, & scholar of genocide, the Holocaust, & authoritarianism:
Martin Shuster sdSreptoon1hm9t97235g2u5796glgh0435l6iaf05it1l232lc20cllf4g0 · So apparently on Sunday Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said in a press conference that "we have got children hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside ... many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s gonna write that children’s story about Minnesota.” Then on Monday--one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day--the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted in response that: "Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges." As someone who spent a year at the Museum as a fellow doing research, I feel embarrassed for the institution. First, it is very clear that Walz wasn't drawing an equivalence, he was drawing an analogy. So this kind of response reminds me of the atrocious positions that the ADL has started to carve out, and why it has become mostly a sycophantic joke, now seemingly mostly geared towards currying favor with MAGA. Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime). We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century. In noting this, let me be clear that this does not erase or make less relevant the centuries of European antisemitism that fed into the Nazi project. That's the whole point: these are all related phenomena. European antisemitism influenced the way in which European colonialism and imperialism operated against indigenous populations in the Americas. Strikingly, as innovations mounted in "administering" the Americas, antisemitic policies also evolved in Europe. Administrators (oppressors) would sometimes even move from one sphere to the other and back. They were all synergistic (a brilliant examination of some of this is María Elena Martínez's _Genealogical Fictions_). (And one could, btw, also tell an important story about the development of Islamophobia in this very same orbit, since policies stumbled on in the Americas came back to oppress both Jews and Muslims in Europe). This is all to say: Walz's analogy is not at all far fetched. The history of oppression doesn't move in any kind of neat or purely linear fashion. It is oftentimes recursive, shifting, necessarily granular. Neither is it a competitive history. It is, in the words of Michael Rothberg, a *multidirectional* history. Drawing these analogies in fact *helps* us understand all the involved phenomena better. At least this is what "Never Again" has meant and means to me: it does not mean only never again for me or other Jews. And it does not mean never again only something that looks exactly like the Nazi genocide. I think also, btw, that this is what it meant for Otto Frank, who spent time *editing* his daughter's diary so that it could be available to anyone, not only to Jews. For ultimately the Nazi genocide--any genocide--is a highly mediated phenomenon: it consists of many diffuse events, marshals an immense amount of people and institutions, relies on sometimes conflicting or contradictory cross-sections of society, and, indeed, emerges out of a process that does not neatly, especially as its happening, have a clear beginning, middle, and end, but rather arranges for itself a kind of constellation that harnesses a range of actors, perspectives, and also histories (this is one way to understand how German colonial projects or anti-communism or ableism were no less crucial to Nazism than European antisemitism). The genocidal outcomes emerge from the structural forms society adopts. And all of this without in any way eliding the special role that Jews played in the apocalyptic Nazi worldview.
January 30, 2026 at 1:24 AM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Accurate statistics on antisemitism are essential. The ADL has failed in this by labeling criticism of Israel as antisemitic. It's great to see @nexusproject.bsky.social stepping up here.
nexusproject.bsky.social The Nexus Project @nexusproject.bsky.social · 12d
NEW: Today, we’re excited to announce the creation of the Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research (NCAR), which will work to improve the quality of research, data, and analysis available to advance the broader mission of confronting hate and promoting Jewish safety.
Senior ADL antisemitism researcher leaves to lead competing effort at watchdog Nexus - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Aryeh Tuchman will direct a new Nexus research center focused on improving data, definitions and public understanding of antisemitism.
www.jta.org
January 29, 2026 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
joelhs.bsky.social
I was always told that one of the central lessons of the Shoah is that legal, juridical regimes can still be immoral. The claim that Anne Frank was in Amsterdam "legally" is false, but more than that, the question "Was Anne Frank an illegal?" is so grossly missing the point of Holocaust remembrance.
joelhs.bsky.social Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 14d
To avoid the possibility Holocaust remembrance might lead to empathy for migrants, Trump's antisemitism envoy claims Anne Frank "was in Amsterdam legally."

In reality, Margot Frank received a summons to go to a labor camp on July 5, 1942. After ignoring this call, they were in Amsterdam illegally.
Tweet from Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun: "Ignorance like this cheapens the horror of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law. She was hauled off to a death camp because of her race and religion. Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today. Our brave law enforcement should be commended, not tarred with this historically illiterate and antisemitic comparison."
January 27, 2026 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
joelhs.bsky.social
Some right-wing Jews, like Trump's antisemitism envoy, will deny even the full extent of the legal apparatus of Jewish persecution during the Holocaust, lest acknowledging that fact lead to empathy for other marginalized groups. www.jta.org/2026/01/27/p...
‘Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally,’ Trump antisemitism envoy says in refuting Walz’s ICE comparison - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun joined the US Holocaust museum in criticizing Walz.
www.jta.org
January 28, 2026 at 8:48 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Thank you to @joelhs.bsky.social for setting the record straight re: Anne Frank

“The Frank family ignored their call-up, meaning they were officially in Amsterdam illegally from this point on. The Trump administration is doing Holocaust revisionism to avoid the possibility of empathy for migrants.”
January 29, 2026 at 6:58 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, we rededicate ourselves to the principle that what happened to us must never again happen to any people, and that none of us are safe until we all are.
January 27, 2026 at 5:59 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
Concord MA votes today on whether to adopt the divisive IHRA definition of antisemitism.

This def'n is not an effective tool to fight antisemitism, it's a political cudgel to silence criticism of Israel.

We urge the Concord select board to vote NO: www.concernedjewishfaculty.org/urge-concord...
Urge Concord Select Board to Reject IHRA | Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
www.concernedjewishfaculty.org
January 27, 2026 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
mississippifreepress.org
Zach Shemper, the congregation’s president, has vowed to rebuild the damaged Beth Israel Congregation. Already, nearby churches are opening their doors, offering to let the congregation worship inside. Other synagogues have offered the Beth Israel Congregation new Torahs.
Mississippi Synagogue Congregant Shares Story of 1967 Ku Klux Klan Bombing
Members of the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, recall when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the building in 1967.
buff.ly
January 17, 2026 at 5:01 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
"Bassett's removal therefore signals not merely a personnel change but an erosion of institutional ethics and academic freedom; Harvard has made clear that universal principles are tolerated only when they do not threaten power."

Basset should be reinstated immediately.
January 17, 2026 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff
aaup.org
The Trump administration is demanding "lists of Jews" from the University of Pennsylvania.

The AAUP condemns this as “a profoundly invasive & dangerous demand that intrudes deeply into the freedoms of association, religion, speech and privacy enshrined in the First Amendment.”

Read more below 👇
UPenn faculty condemn Trump administration’s demand for ‘lists of Jews’
Groups say EEOC demand for names and personal details echoes dark history and threatens safety and civil rights
www.theguardian.com
January 14, 2026 at 3:54 PM
concernedjfaculty.bsky.social
CJFS member @omerbartov.bsky.social on @revdem2020.bsky.social podcast:

On Genocide: Omer Bartov in Conversation about Palestine, Israel, and Germany

revdem.ceu.edu/2026/01/15/o...
On Genocide: Omer Bartov in Conversation about Palestine, Israel, and Germany | Review of Democracy
Over the last two years, the world has witnessed atrocities beyond imagination. The killing of approximately 1,200 people by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, was followed by a war in which the Isra...
revdem.ceu.edu
January 16, 2026 at 10:26 PM