Kesher Talk

Anti-Semitism Conference - wow. I spent the past 3 days at Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-semitism in the West, a conference sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Presenters included Ian Buruma, Abraham Foxman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Todd Gitlin, Daniel Goldhagen, Deborah Lipstadt, David Pryce-Jones, Leon Weiseltier, Simon Schama, and many other journalists and intellectuals from the UK, the US, Canada, Israel, Iran, France, Germany, Poland, and Mexico.

(Focusing on the "new antisemitism" meant that the conference was actually about world terrorism, the new meanings of left and right, Islamism, totalitarianism, national sovereignty, globalization, international law, and every other juicy and pressing issue in our new global reality - but you knew that.)

It was gratifying to find that about 80% of the information and analysis was not news to me (due to blogs, circulated emails, various pundits and reporters, and sites such as MEMRI and Honest Reporting). It was even more gratifying to find the audience (not professional pundits, journalists, or activists) just as up to speed. I deduce this because troll-type questions or comments were few, and there were few gasps of horror or amazement from this mostly Jewish audience at nasty anecdotes or statistics. I assume their personal news-filtering mechanisms are similar to mine.

The remaining 20% of the information and analysis was very illuminating. All the presentations and Q&A sessions were simulcast as web video, which I hope will be permanently available in their archives soon, so you can view them yourself. I also took tons of notes and I plan to post some highlights over the next few weeks.

posted by Judith @ 5/14/2003 04:55:05 PM