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Public Engagement Awards: Dr Brendan McGeever, Professor David Feldman and Dr Ben Gidley – Facing Antisemitism: Politics, Culture, History

This is the sixth in a series of blogs showcasing the Birkbeck 2020 Public Engagement Awards winners and highly commended participants. This project was announced the winner of the category ‘Transforming Culture and Public Life’.

Stop smearing Labour sign

Facing Antisemitism is a new short course taught at Birkbeck that explores the sources, development and contemporary forms of antisemitism. It is open to students, the public and organisations. In 2019 the Labour Party enrolled its key staff on the course.

This project has been shaped directly by current research: Professor David Feldman’s Boycotts Past and Present (2019, Palgrave); his forthcoming The History of the Concept of Antisemitism (Princeton University Press, 2021); his essay ‘Toward A history of the Term of Anti-Semitism’ in The American Historical Review (2019); Dr Brendan McGeever’s new work on antisemitism and the left (Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution, CUP 2019) and Dr Ben Gidley’s Turbulent Times: the British Jewish Community Today, Continuum, 2010. Additionally, the three investigators are writing articles and a new monograph based on the module.

Facing Antisemitism draws on history and the social sciences to answer questions such as: how can we recognise and define antisemitism? How does it relate to other forms of racism? How widespread is antisemitism? Where does it come from? Why does it persist?  What is the impact of antisemitism on Jews? What is the relationship between anti-racism and antisemitism?

The research underpinning this course is directly relevant to Labour because over the last four years, the Party has found itself at the centre of public controversy about the nature and significance of antisemitism. This has been unprecedented: antisemitism now sits at the centre of British political debate like never before. The subject is explosive and controversial, but one that is poorly understood. By engaging with Labour in this way, Dr McGeever, Prof. Feldman, and Dr Gidley hoped to provide key figures in the Party with the concepts and knowledge to make better judgments about antisemitism. In turn, this project provided the former with a valuable opportunity to take their research in a classroom setting to stimulate change and engender new ways of thinking about an urgent problem of our time.

Birkbeck congratulates Dr McGeever, Prof. Feldman, and Dr Gidley on their exciting project, as well as on being selected as the winners in this year’s Public Engagement Awards in the category ‘Transforming Culture and Public Life’.

Further information:

 

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