Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) — The United Nations held a major international convening on Sept. 22 to mark the 20th anniversary of its World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. In many ways, that conference has marked us more than we mark it. For supporters, it was an epoch-making event: an awakening about racism for a world then not yet “woke.” At the same time, it was what we might now call a super-spreader event, causing a new anti-Zionist variant of the world’s oldest hatred to go viral. This month, as we observe this anniver...
(JTA) — Deborah Lipstadt, recently named by President Joe Biden as the U.S. Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, won’t just combat anti-Semitism but may well eliminate it. And that would be a mistake. To be clear, the Emory University historian is a fierce opponent of Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial, having vanquished the Holocaust denier David Irving in a British court, among other triumphs over bigotry. But over the past few years, Lipstadt has led a campaign to eliminate the hyphen in the word “anti-Semitism,” preferr...
The Regents of the University of California (UC) are preparing to issue a policy statement that could be a major advance in the battle against campus anti-Semitism. In response to anti-Semitic incidents throughout the UC system’s 10 campuses, the Regents have released an important draft Statement of Principles Against Intolerance. It is not what the Jewish community requested. But it will be a game-changer nevertheless—if the Regents formally adopt it. (By way of disclosure, I was one of the two national experts on anti-Semitism with whom the...
Does it matter how we define our words? Sometimes it does. The U.S. Department of Education understands this point, as do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Universities need to learn it, too. Last year, the Education Department paid CDC to develop a uniform definition of the word “bullying.” Both agencies recognized that a uniform definition was needed to assist schools to understand what bullying is, when it occurs, and whether efforts to prevent it are successful. This is a basic point, and yet it is lost on many peo...
