“Cold War Ghosts: The American Afterlife of Soviet Antizionism” — Don’t Know Much About with Naya Lekht

Don’t Know Much About with Naya Lekht “Antizionism has been described as a hate movement, as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, and, as I argue, the third era of Jew-hatred. But it can also be understood as one of the most powerful social movements of our time. Powerful not only in its reach, but in…

Posted by kelnersj on February 26, 2026 in Lectures and Podcasts, antizionism

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The Story of American Antizionism– Call Me Back with Dan Senor

Is Antizionism a Soviet invention for persecuting Jews? Dan is joined by Shaul Kelner, professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Vanderbilt University, to examine the rarely-told history of Antizionism. Kelner explains how a framework designed to deny Jewish life under Soviet rule has resurfaced in the West long before October 7 and why many…

Posted by kelnersj on January 28, 2026 in Lectures and Podcasts, antizionism, Soviet Jewry Movement

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“Antizionism and the American Left’s Jewish Problem” — Identity/Crisis

Antizionism has become a badge of belonging—and a tool of exclusion. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Shaul Kelner, professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Vanderbilt University, about how anti-Zionism operates not only as an argument but as a movement culture—shaping who belongs on the American left and what counts as…

Posted by kelnersj on January 27, 2026 in Lectures and Podcasts, antizionism

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“American Antizionism” – Boundless Insights with Rachel Fish

Sociologist and Jewish studies scholar Dr. Shaul Kelner joins Dr. Rachel Fish to examine the rise of antizionism as a distinctly American political and social movement. Kelner argues that contemporary antizionism is less an intellectual critique of Zionism than a political mass movement defined by praxis: the othering and exclusion of Jews through social and…

Posted by kelnersj on December 29, 2025 in Lectures and Podcasts, antisemitism, antizionism

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American Antizionism

Published in Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas Fall/Winter 2025 “Two years after Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Flood” (we must confront the name for reasons that I will explain below), it is less the horrors perpetrated on October 7 than the traumas of October 8 that have forced an American Jewish reckoning. What does it mean that,…

Posted by kelnersj on November 26, 2025 in Magazines and Opinion

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Mobilizing for Freedom: Lessons from the Soviet Jewry Movement

ANU Museum of the Jewish People Tel Aviv Feb 25, 2025 The Mike and Sofia Segal Center for Jewish Culture at ‪@anumuseum‬ invites you to a fascinating conversation with Professor Shaul Kelner, author of the newly released book, “A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews” which recently won the National…

Posted by kelnersj on February 25, 2025 in Lectures and Podcasts, Soviet Jewry Movement

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Academia’s Palestine Exception — SAPIR Conversations

“Academia’s Palestine Exception” SAPIR Conversations January 7, 2025 Critical theory – the study of the ways “oppression gets produced and reproduced within and across societies” – is the dominant method of inquiry in many areas of higher education, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Yet many scholars resist applying it honestly to the study…

Posted by kelnersj on January 7, 2025 in Lectures and Podcasts, antizionism

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Turning Critical Theory on Its Head: Academia’s Palestine exception

Published in SAPIR: A quarterly journal of ideas for a thriving Jewish future Autumn 2024 “Rehearse the litany of abuses and double standards against Jewish and Israeli students and faculty in campuses this past year…. Those parts of the academy that have most embraced critical theory have failed to critique the ways in which their…

Posted by kelnersj on November 18, 2024 in Magazines and Opinion, antisemitism, antizionism

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Elie Wiesel Goes to Moscow: On the (In)visibility of Systemic Antisemitism

Vanderbilt Law School, Dean’s Lecture Series on Race and Discrimination April 3, 2023 Two decades after he was liberated from Auschwitz, and two decades before he won the Nobel Peace Price, Elie Wiesel visited the USSR to report back on the plight of Soviet Jews. His 1966 travelogue, The Jews of Silence, became the galvanizing…

Posted by kelnersj on April 3, 2023 in Lectures and Podcasts, antisemitism, featured, Soviet Jewry Movement

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Special live music returns to campus with COVID protocol-compliant performance

Students and faculty from Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and a Jewish studies class hosted a COVID protocol-compliant live music performance on April 8. Full story and video here.

Posted by kelnersj on April 12, 2021 in In the News, Media, arts, Covid-19, pedagogy

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