NEW YORK, May 1 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 30
internationally recognized authors, scholars and journalists
from North America, Europe and Israel will gather at the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research in Lower Manhattan for a four-
day conference on rising anti-Semitism. The May 11-14 event,
titled "Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West,"
will examine recent anti- Jewish attacks in Western countries-
some just prior to the war in Iraq and others since the start
of the conflict.
"Jews have been slandered and their institutions have been
attacked," declared Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor of The
New Republic, a speaker and a key member of the conference
planning committee. "Europe seems once again disfigured by its
ancient and most ignoble prejudice."
"By exposing and debating anti-Semitism," said Bruce
Slovin, who chairs both YIVO and The Center for Jewish
History, "we help root it out."
The panelists -- all internationally recognized for their
incisive analysis of world events -- are from the United
States, Britain, Canada, Israel, Iran, Mexico, The
Netherlands, Poland, France, Italy and Germany. Among them
are: cultural and political essayist, Paul Berman; French
philosopher Alain Finkielkraut; Anti-Defamation League
National Director Abraham Foxman; Chair of the Harvard
University Afro-American Studies Department, Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.; Executive Director and CEO of the American Jewish
Committee, David Harris; the European correspondent for The
New Yorker, Jane Kramer; author of the just published "Lolita
In Tehran," Azar Nafisi and historian Simon Schama.
"YIVO's mission is to study and document the history,
society and cultures of East European Jewry," explained
Executive Director Dr. Carl Rheins. "That gives us a special
responsibility to learn from our tragic past and help the
world understand the complex issue of anti-Semitism so no one
will ever be able to say 'I didn't know.'" YIVO was founded in
1925 in Vilna, Poland (now Lithuania) and has been
headquartered in New York City since 1940. It is located at
the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York,
New York.
The conference was organized after several members of
YIVO's Board of Directors visited Europe and were alarmed by
the wave of attacks on synagogues, rabbis and other Jews and
Jewish institutions. While many of the assaults were carried
out by Europe's growing Muslim community in an apparent
attempt to export the Middle East conflict, they occurred amid
increased support for anti-Semitic parties in some elections.
New reports also show a steep rise in anti-Semitic incidents
on university campuses in the United States, and some leading
American politicians have even blamed "the Jews" for the
invasion of Iraq.
This landmark conference will reach beyond headlines to
critically examine the current strains of anti-Semitism with
an eye to the varied political, sociological and academic
phenomena that surround them. Steering clear of rhetoric and
advocacy, the conference will be a forum for lively debate and
discussion. The lectures will be viewable in person and via a
live webcast at
www.antisemitism-debates.org.
SOURCE YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
-0- 05/01/2003
/CONTACT: Tamara Moscowitz, YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research, +1-917-606-8288, or Steven E. Greene, Center for
Jewish History, +1-212-294-8303, yivonewdebates@@yivo.cjh.org/
/Web site:
http://www.cjh.org http://www.antisemitism-debates.org/