Is Antisemitism a Form of Racism? And What Does the Answer Mean for Anti-Racism? Public Lecture with Ben Gidley – 4 July 2023

In the immediate post-war era the struggle against antisemitism was central to anti-racist politics. Leading scholars writing at the time, among them W.E.B. Du Bois and Hannah Arendt, viewed antisemitism as a key form of racism. In recent decades, however, there has been a ‘parting of the ways’ between anti-antisemitism and anti-racism. Scholarship on antisemitism – now often situated within Jewish studies – has little dialogue with scholarship on racism in general. In this lecture, Ben Gidley argues that we need to move past the parting of the ways, and develop a more relational or multi-directional understanding. He proposes that an understanding of antisemitism can enrich anti-racist scholarship and a stronger dialogue with critical race scholarship will also enrich the study of antisemitism.

Ben Gidley is an anti-fascist, blogger, and reader in sociology and psychosocial studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

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