Acceptance and Betrayal: Jews, Universities, and the Promise of America

Harvard historian Derek Penslar, the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies, will deliver a lecture exploring how the promise of belonging in America’s universities has given way to a new sense of alienation—and what that shift reveals about Jewish life in America today.

For many American Jews, this has become a time of deep vulnerability—unlike any experienced since the Second World War; traumatized by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and by the spike in antisemitic incidents worldwide that have paralleled the last two years of war in Gaza. Colleges have been of particular concern to Jewish students, parents, and alumni who feel that pro-Palestinian students and faculty have had free rein to shut down other points of view, disrupt campus life, and shame or shun Jewish students who refuse to disavow Israel.

The fraught emotional state of American Jews today is a product of previous generations of Jewish integration and acceptance within American society. From the 1960s until the recent past, universities like Harvard welcomed Jews, but demographic and cultural changes have altered the composition of elite university student bodies and students’ views on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Campus politics over the past two years illuminate American Jewish expectations, frustrations, and fears today.

Penslar has previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies. Derek has published a dozen books, most recently Zionism: An Emotional State (2023), and is currently writing The War for Palestine, 1947-1949: A Global History. Penslar is a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

This is part of the lecture series At a Crossroads: American Judaism at an Unprecedented Time.

Note: this lecture was originally scheduled to take place both in person and online, but due to weather conditions will now take place on Zoom only.