ISGAP-Woolf Institute, in association with the University of Cambridge, UK 

January 23, 2025: “Higher Education Policy, Foreign Funding and Soft Power: Implications for Democratic Principles and Antisemitism”

Location: Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK

Time: 2-6 PM GMT

This symposium marks the launch of a ground-breaking ISGAP report, “Education Policy in the United Kingdom Foreign Funding, Soft Power and Antisemitism.” Panellists will critically examine the influence of foreign funding and ideological forces on academic culture in the United Kingdom, exploring whether these factors contribute to the persistence of antisemitic attitudes in higher education.

Speakers:

  1. Chair: Dr. Charles Asher Small, Director, ISGAP and ISGAP-Woolf Institute Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK; Research Associate, St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, UK
  2. Charlotte Littlewood, ISGAP Researcher, PhD candidate, University of Exeter 
  3. Rojin Sena Cantay, UK campus advisor for CAMERA, University of Exeter

If you are interested in attending, please register for the event here.

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March 5, 2025: “Antisemitism, Intersectionality and the Response of the Feminist Movement to the Sexual violence committed by Hamas on 7 October”

Location: Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK

Time: 2-6 PM GMT

To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, 2025, this event brings together a survivor of the October 7th pogrom, and leading scholars and policy experts to assess the intersection of sexual violence and contemporary antisemitism.

Speakers:

Chair: Manel Msalmi

Manel Msalmi is an ISGAP researcher, who focusses on international relations, environmental humanities and American studies American University in Paris, a blogger on MENA issues in the capitol institute, and an expert on climate change, Arab Spring and gender equality. She collaborated on educational projects against extremism and antisemitism in Belgium and the EU. Msalmi is a project partner at UNESCO and an advisor to EU parliamentarians on MENA and South-Asia. She is founder and president of the European Association for The Defense of Minorities. She received a Top Human Rights award in 2018.

Dr. Yifat Bitton

Yifat Bitton, a legal academic and social activist for equality, is currently president of Achva Academic College of Science & Education in Israel. Previously she was an associate professor at the College of Management, Striks Law School, Israel, and has also had visiting appointments at the School of Transnational Law at Peking University in China (2009–2914) and NYU (2018). She received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her LLM from Yale University Law School, and she has also been a visiting Fulbright Fellow at Harvard (2005).

Prof. Bitton is cofounder and chair of Tmura, The Israeli Center for Equality, for whom she has litigated human rights cases for twenty years pro bono. For her many years of human rights work, Bitton has won myriad social and legal awards and prizes, among which are the Aliance Prize for Education and Social Change (2016), the Minister of Social Equality Award for Organizations Fighting Violence against Women (2016 to Tmura), the “Honoris Causa” Award from the Israeli Bar Association (2015), the Safra Award for Excellence and Contribution to Israeli Society (2015), the Bernice Tennenbaum Prize for innovative feminism from the Hadassah Foundation (2014), the Human Rights Activist Award from the London Human Rights Annual Dinner (2014), and the Dafna Izraeli Fund’s Prize for Israeli Feminist Leadership (2013). She was also nominated as Forbes’ 50 Most Influential Women in Israel, 2015.

Bitton was shortlisted twice for Israel’s Supreme Court, 2016, 2018, making history as the youngest woman and the first woman of Mizrahi descent to ever appear on the list.

Natalie Sanandaji

Natalie Sanandaji serves as a public affairs officer for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM). A Long Island native born to an Israeli mother and Iranian father, Natalie worked in real estate in New York City before October 7th, when she narrowly survived the Nova music festival massacre during a visit to Israel. Her traumatic experience that day led her to transform her life and switch her career path to Jewish advocacy and fighting antisemitism.

Preceding her work at CAM, Natalie has also long co-hosted the “Persian Girl Podcast,” where the conversations generally focus on coming-of-age experiences in the large Iranian expatriate communities of New York and Los Angeles. Given her background, Natalie is well-versed in the struggles in the Middle East against the tyrannical forces of radical Islam backed by the current regime in Tehran, and her guiding mission is to use her multicultural background to her advantage to support the fight for freedom throughout the region and across the globe.

Dr. Charles Asher Small

Charles Asher Small is the Founding Director and President of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP); and the Director of the Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination and Human Rights, Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Tel Aviv University. He is a Research Associate at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge and the Editor of the Journal for Alterity Studies, Academic Studies Press, Oxford. 

If you are interested in attending, please register for the event here. 

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April 2, 2025: Symposium and Workshop on the Development of Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies as a Recognised Discipline.

Location: Okinaga Room, St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, UK

Time: 11 AM – 4 PM BST

The symposium will be chaired by Dr. Charles Asher Small.

Lunch at St Edmund’s Dining Room will be provided. 

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May 7, 2025: “Intellectual Discourse and Contemporary Antisemitism in Higher Education”

Location: Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK

Time: 2-6 PM GMT

This symposium explores the explosion of antisemitism in higher education

Speakers:

Chair: Dr. Charles Asher Small

Charles Asher Small is the Founding Director and President of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP); and the Director of the Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination and Human Rights, Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Tel Aviv University. He is a Research Associate at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge and the Editor of the Journal for Alterity Studies, Academic Studies Press, Oxford. 

Joel Kotek

Dr. Joël Kotek is ISGAP Senior Faculty and a Professor at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. Kotek is a member of several scientific committees, including Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah de Paris, the Jewish Museum of Warsaw, Mechelen Holocaust Museum, Foundation Aladdin (Paris), Evens Foundation (Antwerpen) and Yahad in Unum (Paris). He was the head of the Formation Department at the Mémorial de la Shoah/Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris (2003–2006) and has been, since 2003, the Belgian correspondent of the Moshe Cantor Center on Antisemitism and Racism. He is an ISGAP research fellow.

Kotek has authored a number of important publications, including: La Shoah dans la Bande dessiné (2017), 1939, le quatrième partage de la Pologne (sld) (2015), Israël et les médias belges francophones au miroir du conflit gazaoui de l’été 2014 (2015), translated into English, ISGAP, NY (2015), Mickey à Gurs, les cahiers de Horst Rosenthal (2014), and Dictionnaire de la Shoah (2009).ISGAP Senior Faculty, Institut Jonathas Bruxelles

David Hirsh

David Hirsh has pioneered a sociological account of contemporary antizionism and its relationship to antisemitism. He has worked on crimes against humanity, totalitarianism, democracy and populism. He teaches core sociology, criminology, crimes against humanity and human rights courses at the undergraduate and master’s level. Hirsch is a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was central in building the Engage network and website that led opposition to the proposal for an academic boycott of Israel from 2004 and that led the fight against antisemitic politics in Britain, especially on campus. Hirsh was a leading critic of the ideas underpinning the Corbyn movement and he has been instrumental in shaping the democratic and Jewish responses in Britain, and further afield, to antisemitism. He has a global reputation as a scholar and as leader of the fight against antisemitism. He has appeared as an expert witness in a number of court cases and inquiries. He has written formal reports and chaired a university academic appeals panel on antisemitism. 

Professor David Patterson

Professor David Patterson is ISGAP Senior Faculty and holds the Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas and is a Senior Research Fellow for ISGAP. Patterson has lectured at universities on six continents and throughout the US. A winner of the National Jewish Book Award, the Koret Jewish Book Award, the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, and the Holocaust Scholars’ Conference Eternal Flame Award, he has published more than 40 books and more than 250 articles, essays, and book chapters on antisemitism, the Holocaust and Jewish studies. His most recent books are Twenty-Six Questions along the Path to Wisdom (forthcoming), Eighteen Words to Sustain a Life (2023), Judaism, Antisemitism, Holocaust: Making the Connections (Cambridge, 2022), Shoah and Torah (Routledge, 2022) and Portraits: Elie Wiesel’s Hasidic Legacy (SUNY, 2021).

If you are interested in attending, please register for the event here.

House of Commons, London, UK

January 22, 2025: “Higher Education Policy, Foreign Funding and Soft Power: Implications for Democratic Principles and Antisemitism”

Location: House of Commons, London, UK

Time: 5-6 PM GMT

This parliamentary event will explore the subject matter outlined above in addition to providing an advanced overview of the ISGAP report, “Education Policy in the United Kingdom Foreign Funding, Soft Power and Antisemitism,” the first in a series of comprehensive interdisciplinary studies of antisemitism and higher education in the United Kingdom, with a focus on foreign funding and Muslim Brotherhood influence.

Speakers:

  1. Chair: Joani Reid MP, Labour Party, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism 
  2. Dr. Charles Asher Small, Dr Charles Asher Small, Director, ISGAP and ISGAP-Woolf Institute Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK; Research Associate, St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, UK
  3. Charlotte Littlewood, ISGAP Researcher, PhD candidate, University of Exeter 
  4. Dr. Dave Rich, Head of Policy, Community Security Trust, Associate Research Fellow, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism

If you are interested in attending, please register for the event here. Please note that space is limited.

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March 6, 2025: “Antisemitism, Intersectionality and the Response of the Feminist Movement to the Sexual violence committed by Hamas on 7 October”

Location: House of Commons, London, UK

Time: 5-6 PM GMT

To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, 2025, this parliamentary event brings together a survivor of the October 7th pogrom, and leading scholars and policy experts to assess the intersection of sexual violence and contemporary antisemitism.

Speakers:

Chair: Baroness Verma

Ministerial Champion for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Overseas, a role who chairs the UN Women’s national committee. 

Manel Msalmi

Manel Msalmi is an ISGAP researcher, who focusses on international relations, environmental humanities and American studies American University in Paris, a blogger on MENA issues in the capitol institute, and an expert on climate change, Arab Spring and gender equality. She collaborated on educational projects against extremism and antisemitism in Belgium and the EU. Msalmi is a project partner at UNESCO and an advisor to EU parliamentarians on MENA and South-Asia. She is founder and president of the European Association for The Defense of Minorities. She received a Top Human Rights award in 2018.

Dr. Yifat Bitton

Yifat Bitton, a legal academic and social activist for equality, is currently president of Achva Academic College of Science & Education in Israel. Previously she was an associate professor at the College of Management, Striks Law School, Israel, and has also had visiting appointments at the School of Transnational Law at Peking University in China (2009–2914) and NYU (2018). She received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her LLM from Yale University Law School, and she has also been a visiting Fulbright Fellow at Harvard (2005).

Prof. Bitton is cofounder and chair of Tmura, The Israeli Center for Equality, for whom she has litigated human rights cases for twenty years pro bono. For her many years of human rights work, Bitton has won myriad social and legal awards and prizes, among which are the Aliance Prize for Education and Social Change (2016), the Minister of Social Equality Award for Organizations Fighting Violence against Women (2016 to Tmura), the “Honoris Causa” Award from the Israeli Bar Association (2015), the Safra Award for Excellence and Contribution to Israeli Society (2015), the Bernice Tennenbaum Prize for innovative feminism from the Hadassah Foundation (2014), the Human Rights Activist Award from the London Human Rights Annual Dinner (2014), and the Dafna Izraeli Fund’s Prize for Israeli Feminist Leadership (2013). She was also nominated as Forbes’ 50 Most Influential Women in Israel, 2015.

Bitton was shortlisted twice for Israel’s Supreme Court, 2016, 2018, making history as the youngest woman and the first woman of Mizrahi descent to ever appear on the list.

Natalie Sanandaji

Natalie Sanandaji serves as a public affairs officer for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM). A Long Island native born to an Israeli mother and Iranian father, Natalie worked in real estate in New York City before October 7th, when she narrowly survived the Nova music festival massacre during a visit to Israel. Her traumatic experience that day led her to transform her life and switch her career path to Jewish advocacy and fighting antisemitism.

Preceding her work at CAM, Natalie has also long co-hosted the “Persian Girl Podcast,” where the conversations generally focus on coming-of-age experiences in the large Iranian expatriate communities of New York and Los Angeles. Given her background, Natalie is well-versed in the struggles in the Middle East against the tyrannical forces of radical Islam backed by the current regime in Tehran, and her guiding mission is to use her multicultural background to her advantage to support the fight for freedom throughout the region and across the globe.

Dr. Charles Asher Small

Charles Asher Small is the Founding Director and President of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP); and the Director of the Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination and Human Rights, Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Tel Aviv University. He is a Research Associate at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge and the Editor of the Journal for Alterity Studies, Academic Studies Press, Oxford. 

If you are interested in attending, please register for the event here. Please note that space is limited.