Jonathon Catlin

Opinion | Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story

Mahmoud Khalil counters the charge of antisemitism: “In fact, what is a threat to combating antisemitism in this country is this administration’s unconditional support to a country that’s committing a genocide in the name of the Jewish people.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/o...

You alright, babe? I see you haven’t worn your Martha Nussbaum’s biggest fan custom tank top in 12 years

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is First Republican Lawmaker to Call Gaza Crisis a ‘Genocide’

Strange bedfellows indeed!
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/u...

As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel’s atrocities | Open letter Within weeks, 400 colleagues joined our organization. We say: it is not too late to save lives. End the genocide now

"As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel’s atrocities" – Taner Akçam, Marianne Hirsch and Michael Rothberg for @theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Just stumbled upon this letter from 1945 in which Max Horkheimer (then AJC research director) worries about American Jewry and "Judaism as a whole [] being held morally responsible for the fallacies of Zionism." – Andy Rabinbach, "The Frankfurt School and the 'Jewish Question'"

My panel at the next @jewishstudies.bsky.social conference in DC has been accepted! I'm presenting on the end of "universalist" or "cosmopolitan" Holocaust memory, thinking especially with Pankaj Mishra on how non-Jews like ourselves can continue to relate to it in light of the Gaza genocide

A Columbia genocide scholar says she may leave over university's new definition of antisemitism Academics around the country are raising alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration.

Marianne Hirsch is one of the greatest scholars of memory studies working today, and I have learned so much from her work. Last semester, I assigned her to my students and they learned from her. If she feels she cannot stay at Columbia, that speaks badly of Columbia now. apnews.com/article/colu...

Today in Berlin: Vanessa Thompson and @robin-c.bsky.social kick off their brilliant conference on “Fanon Today” @ktbberlin.bsky.social

An amazing way to end this year’s @memstudiesassoc.bsky.social conference in Prague: a full house for a panel on “Rethinking Holocaust Memory in and beyond the Crisis” with Michael Rothberg, Ben Ratskoff, Marianne Hirsch, Heidi Grunebaum, and Roma Sendyka #MSAPrague2025

Today at @memstudiesassoc.bsky.social: @stefcraps.com explores our hunger for fake news and the collective fantasy of nature miraculously healing itself during the "anthropause" of the Covid-19 panedmic. Would that it were so! #MSAPrague2025

At Least 20 Killed in Stampede Outside a Gaza Food Site, Aid Organization Says

Gaza: where even the "aid" kills
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/w...

A very powerful essay by Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov, arguing that:
a) Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and
b) denying this threatens to "undermine everything that Holocaust scholarship and commemoration have stood for."

Do read the whole thing www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

For the May 2026 International Theory of History Conference in Tallinn, Estonia, I’m organizing a panel on “Rethinking Hayden White and the catastrophic event” for our time of permanent catastrophe, the Anthropocene, ongoing Nakba. Please reach out if interested!
www.inth.ugent.be/node/168605

Hot Adorno Summer sweats it out So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Structure of the Third Antinomy through the end), Wednesday, 16 July, 4pm, Chicago Public Library Lincoln Park loca…

Words I never thought I’d post: “Hot Adorno Summer sweats it out” interccect.com/2025/07/02/h...

Fanon Today.
Contemporary Struggles and Theoretical Perspectives

next week in Berlin!

program etc here:

www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/we01/institu...

‘Humanitarian city’ would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says forcing people into camp would be ethnic cleansing, and anger at Israel is not all down to antisemitism

#ConcentrationCamp & #EthnicCleansing: "The “humanitarian city” Israel’s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian"

Israel’s “Dirty Work” and Germany’s Staatsräson - By: Hanno Hauenstein - Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Palestine Print Print 🖨By: Hanno Hauenstein German chancellor Friedrich Merz has characterized Israel’s most recent war against Iran as a service to the Western world. While Israel is committing genocide in Gaz...

“Germany’s Staatsräson has become as detached from moral standards and the politics of remembrance as they can get. They no longer serve the critical realization of historical responsibility. On the contrary, they undermine it.” @hahauenstein.bsky.social
www.rosalux.ps/israels-dirt...

Now onward to Prague for the Memory Studies Association Conference the next week. Say ahoj!

Saw Paul Klee’s “Angel of History” at Berlin’s Bode Museum! Bought by Walter Benjamin in 1921, it passed on to Adorno and then Scholem after his death. After today it returns to its home at the Jerusalem Museum in Israel/Palestine, where history really really does seem like “one single catastrophe.”

“Prussian Disneyland”

Today in Berlin. Shaul Magid on the shared rotten root of German and Israeli memory amidst the genocidal assault on Gaza: negative exceptionalism

Der Himmel über Berlin

Morgen in Berlin

Hey fellow historians. If you feel, as I do, that the American Historical Association needs serious change, I would consider voting for this slate in the current election.

Kultur—gekauft!

Neues Buch:

Solidaritäten transformieren.
Praktiken und Infrastrukturen in der Migrationsgesellschaft

mit Texten v. Manuela Bojadžijev, Wendy Brown, Rahel Jaeggi, Sandro Mezzadra, Stephan Lessenich, Paul Mecheril u.v.m.

open access!

adocs.de/de/buecher/t...

Tell me you went to Princeton without telling me you went to Princeton

"In the apocalyptic imagination... messianic redemption is therefore a form of historic revenge. To put it crudely, it is a way of settling scores. The violence of a cruel history repeats itself as its own cure." – Jacqueline Rose, The Question of Zion

An antisemitic chair. (Custom birthday gift for Karl Lueger.)📍Wien Museum

Save the Date: Next Wednesday, we will meet at Uferstudios to discuss the relation between capitalism and racism with Manuale Bojadžijev, R. Gooding-Williams, Tommie Shelby and Inés Valdez. More infos: criticaltheoryinberlin.de/event/racial...