Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff

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.

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:

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.

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.

‘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.

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...

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.”

As well as by our friends at @inclusivemass.bsky.social !

Yes, and we must work to stop it there and everywhere

Instead of promoting division on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we should be working to ensure that everyone is safe from bigotry and violence

bsky.app/profile/conc...

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.

Read our letter to the Concord Select Board here: drive.google.com/file/d/1wn0Q...

We are joined in this demand by ACLU of MA @aclum.bsky.social and Boston Workers' Circle, who sent their own letters to the Concord Select Board.

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...

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.

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.

"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.

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

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 👇

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...

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...

From @sikevin99.bsky.social: "If you want proof that stemming criticism of Israel is the motive of IHRA’s key backers, look no further than how a Senate committee scuttled a federal bill codifying it because it also noted that criticism of the Israeli government is not itself antisemitic."

The Blogs: Here We Go Again: Why We’re Still Fighting about Antisemitism Definitions From the blog of Kevin Rachlin at The Times of Israel

"Here I am, once again, explaining why codifying a contested definition into law was always a bad idea—not because antisemitism isn’t real, but because there isn’t consensus on a single definition, and the definition some groups keep trying to enshrine has serious problems." @sikevin99.bsky.social

And here are some of the slides, meant to capture what the hard question is, what I think the bottom line is, and why the IHRA definition, as it's been construed, is problematic:

Excellent discussion yesterday in Concord on protecting free speech in education, and dangers posed by the IHRA definition of antisemitism

This is a welcome relief for the many New Yorkers harassed, targeted, and threatened by these fascists. And it is refreshing to see actual legal consequences for anti-Palestinian & anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia & antisemitism specifically targeting Jewish Leftists.

We’re all betar off now (sorry)

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

“Part of what sets off alarm bells for people like me is a history of people using Jewish lists against Jews. The Nazi campaign against Jews depended on institutions like universities handing over information about their Jewish members to the authorities.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

A horrifying reminder that antisemitism is real and growing. We can and must fight this in solidarity with all other communities that are coming under attack.

Bill Ackman has been a primary driver of what Harvard says is its response to antisemitism on campus--most notably, the ouster of Claudine Gay.

This is where his values lie.

Regarding Harvard's cowardly firing of one of the leading figures in public health:

"The charges of antisemitism are, bluntly, bullshit."

Harvard’s Ouster of Mary Bassett Is a Revolting Act of Cowardice The public health icon was brutally removed from her job for one reason: her opposition to genocide in Gaza.

Powerful piece on Basset' removal:

"Universities are no longer about open inquiry and debate if they are willing to close programs, shutter departments, shift away from priorities that arouse the ire of the state, and purge those who run afoul of those in power."

www.thenation.com/article/soci...

For most of my life, I really thought "Hitler was bad" was one of the few political beliefs all Americans beyond a tiny fringe shared. Sure, we might disagree on what made him bad, and many misunderstood his broader ideological framework, but we all agreed he was really bad. No longer, apparently.

The Country’s Self-Appointed Antisemitism Watchdog Is Ignoring Its Biggest Source of Antisemitism Calling for Palestinian equality is not antisemitism, no matter what the ADL says.

From @joshuashanes.bsky.social at @slate.com

The ADL's obsessive focus on Mamdani (rather than any of the rapidly growing right-wing strains of antisemitism) is "not about antisemitism but rather about preserving Israeli power over Palestinians"

slate.com/news-and-pol...

It’s so fucking sick that Stanford is *felony* prosecuting their own students for a ONE HOUR PROTEST inside the president‘s office. Crime? Barricading themselves for ONE HOUR

Felony charges and six-figure fines for a one-hour nonviolent protest is outrageous. An institution that does this is not an institution of education.

“The report’s flawed critique of the FXB Center and particularly the Palestine programme is a crystallisation
of a pressure campaign that has been going on for years”, says Harvard lecturer and CJFS member Aaron Shakow.