SPME
With the start of a new school year, there’s reason to be concerned: Anti-Semitism is a serious problem on some college campuses, causing Jewish students to feel threatened and even fear for their safety. Yet the U.S. government is not enforcing…
read more
In many parts of the world, Jews are increasingly unwelcome in the 21st century. The number of countries in which wearing visibly Jewish clothing such as a kippa means risking physical violence has hit an all-time high. On both the…
read moreI overheard a conversation in late September of 2001. I was sitting on a Manhattan subway on my way to give a talk on medieval Muslim-Christian relations at New York University. A construction worker on his way to the clean-up…
read moreIn 1929 the world had first experienced a modern global economic meltdown. “The Great Depression” quickly permeated into Europe, hitting it with vast inflation and unemployment, causing anxiety and dependence of the people. The Nazi Party seized this opportunity to gain political…
read more(JNS.org) The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) dismissed complaints against three University of California (UC) schools—UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Irvine—which had alleged that anti-Israel activity on campus, and the schools’ insufficient response to that activity,…
read moreThe U.S. Department of Education has exonerated two more UC campuses — Irvine and Santa Cruz — of allegations that they fostered anti-Semitic climates by allowing protests against Israeli policies and other incidents that Jewish students contended amounted to illegal harassment. UC…
read moreSince I joined Southern Fried Science in 2009, I’ve written almost 1,000 blog posts. This post has unquestionably been the most difficult one for me to write. Although I’ve always enjoyed sharing and debating my opinions (even when they’re unpopular…
read moreSamuel Sandler, an aeronautical engineer and head of the Jewish community in Versailles, France, announced a few weeks ago that he’d had the local synagogue registered as a national landmark. “My feeling is that our congregation will be gone…
read morePerhaps no cosmology lacks for its devils, evil spirits–personifications of a wrongness so unacceptable that it can be granted no legitimate space if the community is to survive. Indeed, if famed French literary critic, René Girard, is correct, then what…
read moreBravo to the University of Michigan for disinviting Alice Walker – and shame on Walker for reportedly spreading false rumors about Michigan’s reasons for doing so. The University of Michigan recently withdrew a speaking invitation to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The…
read more