In the name of "fighting antisemitism," Indiana University appointed a Christian scholar to tell Jewish scholars what they can and cannot say - all while they invited Tucker Carlson to speak on campus. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...

A sneak peek at the cover of next week’s issue, which celebrates Zohran Mamdani’s historic win. #NewYorkerCovers https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/451hFM

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “If Americans want to challenge their country’s illiberal turn, they need to stop clinging to the recent past,” Sven Beckert says in a guest essay. “Like other economic regimes before it, it is gone. Resurrection is impossible and to aim for it is politically disastrous.”

„Wer verfolgt die Komplizen? Europa und die USA sind für Menschenrechts­verletzungen in Gaza mitverantwortlich. Der Krieg ruft Assoziationen zu den Nürnberger Prozessen wach.“ Nitzan Lebovic (nach langem vor-sich-hin-schieben, wie er berichtet) in der TAZ taz.de/Aufarbeitung...

As of today, five million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust have been identified. www.reuters.com/business/med...

"If, for the supposed safety of Jewish people, one is prepared to unleash a great wave of dehumanization once again because a German majority feels threatened by foreigners, then the consensus is merely the same old German tradition..." @deborahfeldman.bsky.social www.fr.de/kultur/debor...

Jonathan Boyarin: www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/...

Mark Mazower speaks on his new history of the term “antisemitism” and its distortion and abuse in recent years: newbooksnetwork.com/on-antisemit...

Such an important conversation between @mashagessen.bsky.social and Marianne Hirsch about Holocaust memory, genocide, and Palestine. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/o...

Tomorrow!

I wrote about what the Weimar Republic tell us about political violence: time.com/7321664/poli...

Nothing to see here, Volks!

Today on the blog, Sam Franz and Véronique Mickisch interview Edward Baring about his forthcoming book, "Vulgar Marxism," which studies how projects for worker education shaped 20th-c. Marxist thought. @uchicagopress.bsky.social @samfranz.bsky.social

Ominous...

Excited to be hosting historian Doris Bergen at the @urochester.bsky.social Humanities Center on Oct. 29 for a lecture on the collapse of German democracy in the Nazi era. Could there be any parallels to today, I wonder? 🤔 events.rochester.edu/event/how-ea...

My next book has a cover! I Will Not Abandon You is a new history of queer women under Nazism that calls for us to rethink how we understand fascist persecution as well as the very foundations of progressive politics today. You can preorder it anywhere you buy books bookshop.org/p/books/i-wi...

In a new think piece for the JHI forum on Political Economy, Alexandre Aloy interrogates the concept and historical genealogy of neoliberalism by situating it alongside transnational narratives of authoritarianism.

The new pope is quoting Hannah Arendt. www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

They're here! In just a few weeks I'll be hosting the brilliant Dagmar Herzog to explore the "sexy racism" of the contemporary far right. Those in Rochester, if you'd like a copy of this book and commit to attending the workshop, write me and I'll give you one! events.rochester.edu/event/the-ne...

Many of y’all

Hey hey, German Studies in the news again!

Throwback to when I was an insufferable theory bro humanities grad student living in Bushwick

Brilliant interview with Ben Ratskoff on how the Nova Exhibition commemorating October 7 “invites visitors to participate affectively and imaginatively in immersive theatrics as a kind of vicarious victimhood.” @thediasporist.bsky.social thediasporist.de/schlock-and-...

Happening tomorrow, on what happens to be the two year anniversary of October 7 and all the horror that has ensued from it. We hope to have a timely conversation about new work in Holocaust studies and why it still matters in this moment.

Please join me for a virtual conversation with Dan Stone on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 12:15pm Eastern, about his many new publications on the Holocaust in Romania, the International Tracing Service, and volume 1 of The Cambridge History of the Holocaust. Register here: events.rochester.edu/event/the-ho...

Pleased to share my interview with Kathryn Brackney about her award-winning new history of Holocaust consciousness from @uwiscpress.bsky.social & @glmosseprogram.bsky.social. The spooky cover art is from a 1966 edition of Damiano Malabaila (a pen name of Primo Levi). www.jhiblog.org/2025/10/01/s...

The powerful moral legacy of Yeshayahu Leibowitz lives on: "We also must resist the inclination, as the Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz admonished in his famous 1953 article 'After Kibiyeh,' to wrap state actions in the veil of religious sanctity." @forward.com forward.com/opinion/7726...

Tomorrow (Thursday, Oct. 2) is the last day to submit abstracts for our ACLA seminar on new concepts and representations of catastrophe. Please join us!

Me when university admin suggests I tone down the wokeness

“Judge rules non-citizens have the same free speech rights as US citizens under the first amendment” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

New York friends and colleagues: I'm presenting my work on the failures of German Holocaust memory culture at Columbia in two weeks! Register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

In a new think piece for the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Marek Maj discusses how, before the Soviet Union's détente with the West, Polish scientists attempted to render intellectual labor more efficient by adapting and revising the Western managerial turn to motivation.

The separation of antisemitism from all other bigotries in the US, by banning DEI for other minority communities while effectively mandating it for Jews, is unfair to all those other communities, but it also ensures a whole generation will not truly understand antisemitism.

Overseen at Berlin’s 100,000 strong demonstration in solidarity with Gaza

This sort of thing is unfair to these students, but it is also ultimately going to backfire against Jews: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

From Moira Wegel’s talk this morning at the GSA: Andrew Breitbart on his hatred of the Frankfurt School (aka “Berlin Franklin School”)

JD Vance appropriating the term "blood libel" to describe legitimate criticism of ICE agents is one of the most antisemitic things I have heard in US politics in the past few weeks. Yet this administration has somehow managed to convince a lot of people it actually cares about fighting antisemitism.

Smart piece from @schuneke.bsky.social on the naughty bad gays (closets full of them, even) pervading the second Trump administration. “It’s a pattern that repeats again and again: elites fuck who they want, regardless of what the law says.” thebaffler.com/latest/the-f...

Hire me!

"A question of intent: Is what's happening in Gaza genocide?" www.npr.org/2025/09/25/g...

For the first time in a while, Ezra Klein platforms a brilliant scholar with sharp political instincts (Corey Robin) rather than right-wing demagogues. The analogy for our post-Kirk moment isn’t the Reichstag Fire or Grynspan assassination but McCarthyism. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

Catastrophe for sale once again in Deutschland. www.the-berliner.com/politics/is-...

I'm in the "Guardian" writing about Judith Butler and the new McCarthyism: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Staatsräson presents the irresistible temptation of turning guilt into self-righteousness. Horror and self-hatred are transubstantiated into pride and patriotism when the Great National Genocide becomes an origin story for how and why Germans know better about antisemitism.”

Tomorrow (Tuesday, 9/23) on Zoom!

This new essay by @mashagessen.bsky.social sadly strikes all the right alarm bells: we are in our Herschel Grynszpan moment, in which violence by a lone angry young man is used as a pretext for state violence against entire groups deemed terrorists or sympathizers. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...

This explains quite a lot about how people think about Jews in the US, actually.

Excited to read this new open-access article by Aleida Assmann: "Which Lessons are to be Learned from the Holocaust? A Personal Account of the History of the IHRA 2000–2025 from the Viewpoint of a Memory Scholar" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I'm pleased to share the first piece in the forum I'm co-editing with Jacob Saliba and Paige Pendarvis on "The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History." Much more great work to come!

Officially marking the first of many pieces in the Blog's forum "The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History," Mikkel Flohr offers a novel reading of Marx's historical materialism for a "political economy of ideas." @mflohr.bsky.social