Kean to hold conference on global anti-Semitism
Leading educators, writers, and experts will offer analysis and testimony at the Conference on Global Anti-Semitism at Kean University on Sunday, March 13. The all-day event, held in the STEM building on the campus in Union, is sponsored by the university’s Jewish Faculty and Staff Association.
Conference organizers laid out a Plan of Action in response to what they say is “an explosive rise in overt worldwide anti-Semitism.” Among their aims:
• To produce a conference that explores the extent and nature of the new international anti-Semitism and the connection between it and hostility to Israel (anti-Semitism expressed as a delegitimization and challenge to the continued existence of a secure Jewish homeland).
• To generate a series of events, including conferences, assemblies, workshops, and activities aimed at encouraging Jewish identity and alliance with the Jewish people as a nation tied to their own homeland.
Such efforts would target Jewish youth with the aim of increasing engagement with Jewish matters and interests, and forge affiliations of a political, social, and religious nature with non-Jewish groups, to support Jewish causes, survival, and well-being.
Such efforts would further be geared toward understanding, deflecting, and diluting those forces that are antagonistic to and would undermine Jewish survival.
Organizers said the conference reflects a fundamental purpose: to promote conciliation and dialogue for understanding the problems and issues that anti-Semitism presents, and to raise the consciousness of all people regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality.
The conference schedule:
9 a.m.: Registration and refreshments
University president Dr. Dawood Farahi will deliver opening remarks and introduce the program.
10-11: Opening keynote: “The Devil That Never Dies: Global Anti-Semitism”
Dr. Daniel Goldhagen, award-winning author of such works as Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996), A Moral Reckoning (2002), Worse Than War (2009), and The Devil That Never Dies (2013), in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulent anti-Semitism
11-12:30 p.m. Panel on contemporary anti-Semitism
• Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs, Simon Wiesenthal Center, New York City
• Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, Emory University
• Jonathan Tobin, senior on-line editor and political blogger, Commentary magazine
• Daniel Guadalupe, attorney with Norris McLaughlin & Marcus in New Jersey
Moderator: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, vice-president, New York Board of Rabbis
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-2:30 Second keynote: “The State of Global Anti-Semitism in 2016”
The Hon. Ira Forman, U.S. special envoy of the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism
2:30-4 Panel on anti-Semitism and Israel
• Prof. Thane Rosenbaum, director of the Forum on Law, Culture & Society at NYU Law
• Prof. Mahnaz Afridi, director of Manhattan College’s Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center
• The Rev. Robert Moore, executive director of the Coalition for Peace Action, Princeton, and pastor, East Brunswick Congregational Church and Livingston Avenue United Church of Christ, New Brunswick
• Prof. Michael Curtis, emeritus professor of political science at Rutgers University
Moderator: Rabbi Mark S. Golub, Jewish Broadcasting System, host of L’Chaim
4-5 p.m. Concluding keynote: “Global Anti-Semitism: An Assault on Human Rights”
The Hon. Irwin Cotler, former Canadian minister of justice; emeritus professor of law, McGill University; director, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights
Moderator: Dr. Charles Asher Small, director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and visiting professor, Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University
Advance registration is required for complimentary admission and lunch; visit kean.edu/global-anti-semitism.
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