ISGAP Flashpoint

In line with our commitment to academic freedom, ISGAP Flashpoint features articles designed to foster public debate about critical issues related to developments in global antisemitism, with a focus on the contemporary context.

Kindly note that the opinions expressed by the authors of ISGAP Flashpoint are their own and do not necessarily reflect or receive endorsement from ISGAP. ISGAP believes in providing a platform for diverse perspectives to encourage open dialogue on these important matters.

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Columbia’s BDS Motion Misses the Point About Dialogue

Last week, students at Columbia University passed a resolution calling for boycotting and divesting from Israel. Their motion, sponsored by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, asserts that any commercial or intellectual connections to Israel “fall under the UN International Convention’ for both the suppression and punishment of the ‘Crime of Apartheid.’” For me, this news […]

Anti-Israel Claims of Ethnic Cleansing Have No Place in a Student Paper – or Anywhere

Last week Columbia University’s students passed a referendum that recommends that the university divests from all financial activities with Israel. According to the student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), this student led directive falls under the United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Jennifer Roskies, in this […]

The Tirana Conference on Antisemitism: Bringing Governments Together to Review their Commitments

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) undertook to combat antisemitism following a Ministerial level conference hosted by the German Government in 2004. Since then almost every succeeding chairmanship has held a conference on the subject to revise and update commitments, on an annual basis. These have included agreements to monitor antisemitism, train […]

Officially Sanctioned Hate at the University of Michigan

The 2020 Youth for Palestine Conference is taking place from January 25-26 at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. The conference will be hosted by Midwest Students for Justice in Palestine (Midwest SJP), Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE). The conference is also being sponsored by the American Muslims […]

Political Leadership in The Age of Scoundrels – Reflections in advance of the UK’s December Election

If the second quarter of the twentieth century was “The age of the dictators” then the current period is bidding to be “The age of the scoundrels”. Certainly, few would claim that many of today’s national leaders display high levels of personal integrity. Perhaps it was ‘ever so’ but surely, not, in democracies, displayed in […]

Poisonous Pedagogy: Israel Hatred and the Collapse of Liberal Education

Professor William Kolbrener reflects on the corrupting and ideologised pedagogy in higher education that is creating ‘a moral cosmos as rigid as any to be found in conventional theologies’ and which not only demonises Israel but erodes the very basis of the liberal university. He calls for those committed to democracy to make clear that […]

The Small Matter of Malice: Meditations on “the Pattern” of Antisemitism

I have just spent the week at Oxford (St. John’s College) at the annual ISGAP conference on antisemitism, which brings together a wide range of people, from scholars to graduate students, to learn about antisemitism and build curricula for teaching it. We were 86 scholars-in-residence: a really impressive group of people at all levels, the scholars, […]

Commemorating the 1952 Murder of Jewish Intellectuals in the Soviet Union

Professor Kiril Feferman examines the execution of Jewish intellectuals in the Soviet Union, which took place on August 12-13, 1952, marking one of the final acts of persecution by Joseph Stalin against the Jewish people. On August 12-13, 1952, thirteen members of the Jewish elite in the Soviet Union were executed, following the trial and […]

The Appropriation of Apartheid

As reactionary forces, some of whom portray themselves as “progressive”, use the Apartheid charge to delegitimise Israel and the Jewish people, Vuyolwethu Mkhuseli Xulu’s article is timely and provides insight to a true South African perspective, in criticising those who appropriate the history of struggle of the indigenous peoples of South Africa against the ruthless […]

The University of Cape Town should uphold itself as a Beacon of Freedom and Vote against a Boycott of Israel

On April 2, 2019, I had the privilege of giving a lecture at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The topic was “The Prospects for African Solidarity and Pan-Africanism,” where I discussed the unique challenges that Africans in the diaspora and Africans in the continent face in our struggle for collective progress and full self-realization. […]