The rejectionist posture of the UJA is ironically rooted in a (correct) belief that Mayor Mamdani is not an antisemite and will not retaliate in any meaningful way. The cynicism of this boycott is lost on no one. Jewish leaders who meet with Mamdani, i.e., doing their jobs, are cast as "tokens."

100 years ago, you would've heard mostly Yiddish and Russian among the parents at the City College graduation. Real New Yorkers admire such people.

Today is Nakba Day, when we commemorate the roughly 750,000 Palestinians who were forcibly displaced by Zionist militias during the 1948 Palestine War. Acknowledging the Nakba and making restitution is the precursor to building a better future for everyone living in the region.

When I was younger, Nicholas Kristof would write these incredibly patronizing columns about Palestinians needing to find a Gandhi. He is an upper class humanitarian par excellence. Pro-Israelists don't realize how far they're sliding to the right.

Jonathan Haidt is one of those “liberals” with virtually no detractors on the right—Isaiah Berlin if he was a business school psychologist. So he’s the perfect choice for Linda Mills, Gigi Dopico, and the NYU administration.

Yes, that's why how we know it is an empty threat. Unless Netanyahu can 100% ensure that Aileen Cannon will be the presiding judge, it is not happening.

Despite living in New York my whole life and being at NYU for a while, tonight was my first visit to the Comedy Cellar. And Aziz Ansari turned up.

Noam Pianko on the recent JTS contretemps and the myth of Zionist consensus.

Dan Goldman is now attacking Brad Lander for investing in an Israeli weapons manufacturer as NYC Comptroller. I think Dan is, in the argot of Gen Z, "cooked."

Abe Foxman indelibly tarnished his reputation as a liberal Jewish leader by the position ADL took on Park51. But at the same time, it's hard to imagine him playing footsie with the anti-democratic right the way Jonathan Greenblatt is doing. He definitely would not have defended Elon Musk.

The problem with being an anti-liberal leftist is that you eventually realize there aren't that many anti-liberal leftists in this country but there are plenty of anti-liberals of a different sort. Only the strongest of wills can resist the pull of suddenly feeling larger than yourself.

My occasional elitist musing: The America I grew up in was not a particularly liberal or enlightened place, but people like Laura Loomer and MTG were relegated to the Jerry Springer Show. Donald Trump's place in the lineup was only a few rungs higher. It's where they belonged.

Please put things in perspective: AOC was re-endorsed by NYC DSA with over 85% support. Ryan Grim and Adam Johnson are not at all good proxies for "the left." Many of us were disappointed with AOC's convention speech, but we also remain opposed—obviously—to the far-right and MTG.

If only AOC had eagerly supported Donald Trump for years and helped incite a far-right coup attempt, she would be more easily forgiven by a certain kind of "leftist." Unfortunately for her, she was seen plotting with the real enemy—the liberals.

I'm now apparently supposed to credit Marjorie Taylor Greene for being a genuine far-right nut who was "betrayed" by a lifelong charlatan. Sorry, no.

Here is what AOC owes MAGA foreign policy restrainers and opponents of the US-Israel relationship: She won't support the Loomer-Huckabee hawkish pro-Israel wing of the Republican Party against them. That's all and already done.

I don't understand why AOC must align with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson because of a perceived overlap on Israel/Palestine. Let them fight their own battles on the right. AOC offering praise to paleocons will more likely than not hurt them with Republicans.

as per melissa's thread, it is really important to understand that a major goal of this administration is the resegregation of key institutions of american society

A toxic circle: Israel real estate events in (mainly Modern Orthodox) synagogues attract protesters lured by the illusion of an immediate impact. These protests in turn encourage more such events to demonstrate defiance. Who will get exhausted first?

Calla Walshes were a dime a dozen in the late '60s. She sticks out today because the far-left barely exists, despite all the huffing and puffing about campus radicals in the New York Times.

clear goal of republicans in these states is to, in the words of carter glass, “eliminate every Negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.”

It's all a tempest in a teapot, but it will be interesting to see avowedly pro-Palestine Jewish leftists continue to denounce Graham Platner while Chuck Schumer goes through the motions and supports him.

This is why I advised being careful and narrowly sticking to the evidence in criticizing Graham Platner. He was always likely to be the nominee. If you actually went ahead and called him a Nazi, you now have a moral duty to support Susan Collins. As horrible as she is, no one would say she's a Nazi.

Yehuda HaKohen resurfaces again. Cc: @josie.zone

Every time I think it was overkill to pursue citizenship in another country, I am quickly disabused of that reassurance.

I’m sure the ADL and AJC thought that by going after Mamdani, they could maintain a hard line against anti-Zionism in US politics. They cannot. Anti-Zionism is now the norm for a whole generation. What they did was send the message that it doesn’t matter if anti-Zionists work to avoid antisemitism.

I personally don't want secular political officials in the United States to declare that a foreign nation is central to my "identity" as a Jewish American. But maybe that's my problem with a historical memory that reaches back further than 3 years.

No socialist movement in the US will succeed in obtaining a majority without 90%+ of Black Americans behind it. I suspect the hand-wringing over "racial capitalism" on X is a way of not dealing with the practical politics of winning this overwhelmingly working class constituency.

Elite capture of social movements is a serious problem. But to be the annoying historian, I think we should remember that capture is only the second half of the story. The first is elite compromise (sometimes capitulation) in the face of struggles by marginalized people who haven't become elites.

There is a really awful discourse on racial capitalism on the other site, and everyone you would think is involved with it is.

Russell Jacoby is a legend and I am always happy to see his byline. It is depressing, though, that he was made to read Gabriel Rockhill's balderdash in his golden years.

This is such an embittered exchange between colleagues. And I do not use the word colleague in a broad sense—Connelly and Slezkine are in the same department.

The Young Turks? More like the Middle-aged Anti-Dreyfussards.

When you're scheduling an archive appointment at Duke and you make the mistake of looking at the collection processing history.

John Ganz academia rapprochement

Some very nice news for a change.

Absolute boss move by Ofer Cassif to use Jeffrey Herf’s old (and very good) scholarship to make this point.

Before 1967, it was the norm for American Jewish leaders (then, like now, self-appointed) to insist on the autonomy of American Jewry vis-a-vis Israel. These people were politically pro-Israel, as Geoffrey Levin has shown, but they were not hubristic like Jonathan Greenblatt and David Harris.

Polarized into buying this book before I have any time to read it.

Hungary has chosen cultural suicide? Is the nation collectively watching Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo?

Why So Many Protestants Are Done with the Modern Papacy By Henry VIII

I'm so happy George Soros lived to see the day.

Reminder: Iran is not a threat to the United States. They are only an annoyance insofar as the US has ambitions to be a global hegemon, including in the Middle East. Maybe it's time to fold that project up. Israel's enemies do not have to be ours.

>loses a war in Persia >builds massive triumphal arch

New Yorker this week: "In the 90s, William F. Buckley had tried to keep paleocons like Brimelow and Buchanan out of mainstream conservatism by banning such ideas from the pages of National Review." Brimelow was a senior editor of NR in the 90s and wrote many articles including cover stories.

I didn't realize anyone thought that Eric Swalwell was some sort of major talent who can't be thrown under the bus. I have always found him annoying and glib.

An excellent article carefully deconstructing the pseudointellectual drivel of Adam Louis-Klein.

It’s been several years since I identified with J Street’s politics, but as a matter of recent historical fact they enabled and legitimized progressive Democrats’ moving away from the formerly “bipartisan” AIPAC Israel dead-ender position. Now J Street being pushed leftward. Let’s try to take the W.

I would not have predicted J Street endorsing an end to US aid to Israel, especially including funding for the Iron Dome. J Street once touted the Iron Dome as a liberal Zionist accomplishment, conceived by Labor's Amir Peretz and championed by Barack Obama. We're really on new political terrain.

Anecdotally, this is my experience with my Jewish students. The ones who might want to talk about real antisemitism on campus are being dissuaded by the fact that they do not want to feed the destruction of higher education as a whole, and now by the fear of ending up on the admin's Jew list.