U.S. support for Israel isn’t just foreign policy, it’s a political religion. Rooted in Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism, it blurs borders until America and Israel are imagined as one, argues Elizabeth Shakman Hurd for @newlinesmag.bsky.social

NEW: What makes the relationship between the U.S. & Israel unique, one that can’t be captured by ordinary frameworks? It’s as if the two were a single entity - “AmericaIsrael” - which functions like a political religion, argues @bethhurd.bsky.social newlinesmag.com/argument/ame...

Palestinian students who were admitted to American universities are now trapped in Gaza, where Israel has destroyed most schools.

The border no longer divides only countries. It snakes between white and brown, between families and neighbors, between citizens and the rights they once thought were inviolate.

As Israel’s tactics in Gaza have increasingly provoked international condemnation, rabbis across the world are speaking out against the Israeli government’s conduct in the war, on moral and religious grounds.

The university’s trustees and leaders view it as a tax-free technology incubator, and its debt load is so great that it is abandoning ideals it once held dear in order to sustain that goal. We are simply choosing not to be a university.

While new collaborations between Israeli and U.S. universities lack widespread buy-in from American faculty and students, framing them as redress for supposed discrimination against Jewish or Israeli students, “is a cynical but very effective way to make sure these partnerships are untouchable.”

It’s harder and harder for Democratic politicians who want to position themselves as sensible, moderate liberals to defend a country that carries out such grotesque crimes against its stateless and rightless noncitizen subjects.

The problem with Antisemitism Here/Now is that its tendentious and simplistic approach to enormously complex histories, including the history of Zionism, is at odds with the mission of the university: to teach, not to indoctrinate. www.chronicle.com/newsletter/t...

CURA is looking for an assistant director! Here’s your chance to work at the oldest center for the study of religion and world affairs in the U.S. Please share widely! jobs.silkroad.com/BU/External/...

This is not a temporary measure in an abnormal period. These agreements help create a new normal. If we are being extorted, then just say so. But don’t call a stick-up a voluntary agreement, and don’t sell it as a return to the way things were. www.browndailyherald.com/article/2025...

In the second part of their CM conversation, @bethhurd.bsky.social and Hannah Strømmen discuss the role of masculinity in far-right movements today and the importance of focusing on affect when studying them. contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-m...

Part II of my discussion with @hannahmstrommen.bsky.social about her new book Bibles of the Far Right. Fantastic, creative work on some of the most vexing questions of our time. @cmnd.bsky.social

Important.

The fact that we now have two genocides marks a terrible historical irony. Our vast and varied response to the first genocide—a response motivated in large part by our determination to prevent such a thing from ever happening to us again—must now be understood as one of the causes of the second.

Sometimes a book is exciting because it makes you think in new ways. Other times it's important to a particular historical moment. Rarely does a book do both. Hannah Strømmen’s new book The Bibles of the Far Right is the exception. My review for @cmnd.bsky.social urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

“I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.”

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

“We were shocked by the video…which directly vilifies the movement for rights for Palestinian people and non-Zionist Jews who stand against genocide,” Bez said. “It explicitly requires students to adopt the position that there’s no room for anti-Zionism, and that all anti-Zionism is antisemitic.”

"It really motivated us to want to speak out before such a deal is made and implore our Board of Trustees and our president to not capitulate. Don't give in to this blackmail. We know it's going to be a tough road, but it won't stop here," Nielsen said.

For Immediate Release: Northwestern Faculty Group Opposes “Dealmaking” with Lawless Trump Administration

One of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities is reviewing whether to launch divestment drive and drop the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

It was such a pleasure to talk with @bethhurd.bsky.social about her fantastic new book! It’s so important, so relevant, and SUCH a compelling read. Listen to our conversation anywhere you stream podcasts @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social in Religion! newbooksnetwork.com/heaven-has-a...

Looks good! And timely

“Parties thinking they can wheedle their way into a bargain with a capricious administration are bringing intuitions from the world of private deals, backstopped by the rule of law, into the very different realm of political bargains with absolutism-adjacent executive branches.”

My conversation with Jacob Barrett about Heaven Has a Wall for New Books Network is up!

Melt Ice in July: buy a few tickets at $5 each, support refugees, win cool stuff frim local Tucson artists. @borderlinks.bsky.social

An Israel liberated from the burden of the Holocaust may finally come to terms with the need for its 7 million Jewish citizens to share the land with the 7 million Palestinians living in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in peace, equality and dignity. That will be the only just reckoning.

“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." My entry for Heaven Has a Wall. page99test.blogspot.com/2025/07/eliz...

International law “facilitates empire in the traditional sense because strong states … shape the meaning of international rules and obligations through interpretation and practice”. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

I've been honored to be a member of the Editorial Board of the vitally important *Journal of Africana Religions* since its founding. I encourage you to submit your research for publication, and get in touch with Interim Managing Editor (and co-founding editor) Edward Curtis with any questions.

“It’s hard to keep defending yourself against a false accusation. It’s logically impossible to prove an absence. And as anyone who has ever been falsely accused knows, it hurts.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/o...

Mamdani: “As mayor, I will be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and will be meeting them wherever they are across the five boroughs, whether it’s at their synagogues and temples or in their homes or at the subway platform.”

New from Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, one of the most perceptive scholars of religion and politics. A timely book on a crucially important issue press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

“The liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.” —Mahmoud Khalil ❤️

"Borders are religious in the sense that they reckon with human limits. They are sites at which the limits of the human become apparent. They are religious in the sense of having a capacity to summon a sacred American nation without necessarily summoning 'religion.'" - @bethhurd.bsky.social

"Hurd’s thesis is most intriguing when she focuses on how borders are both a palpable and inchoate idea; DHS, for instance, carries out border enforcement activities deep within the American state—far from any actual border—as well as all over the globe, with offices in far-off countries."

“The court uncritically takes the government’s line for granted, that speech activity critical of Israel is inherently anti-Jewish – though Jewish students and professors make up a large percentage of those speaking up for Palestinian human rights.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Such a pleasure to speak with the @muftah.org crew about my new book. 👇

Exclusive: US quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-us-quietly-sent-hundreds-hellfire-missiles-israel-iran-attack

Everything you need to know about tomorrow's 'parade': www.huffpost.com/entry/the-ae...

When Harvard treats criticisms of Israeli violence as antisemitism or of Israel as a state for Jews above the other people who live there, it reduces Jewish identity to a political litmus test – one that erases the rich diversity of Jewish thought and experience. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Our June issue is here! Articles on authoritarian Christianity in the U.S., bulldozing Muslim homes in India, the film Sabbath Queen, Latinx environmentalism, & borders & religion from @nberlat.bsky.social, @anujbehal.bsky.social, @helenemeyers.bsky.social, & @bethhurd.bsky.social. therevealer.org

My new book Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders and the Global United States is out! Here's an excerpt from the Introduction. therevealer.org/american-bor...

Trump is demonstrating what happens when our sense of ourselves as a singularly exceptional nation, unbound by the rules that govern everyone else, is transferred from the nation to one man. Nothing will impose a meaningful check like the mobilization of the people. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

How can we ground political theologies in feminist, ecological, & Latin American epistemologies? How can Latin American ecofeminist liberation theologies contribute to illuminating & addressing the politics of our time? PhD candidate Ely Orrego Torres @elyorrego.bsky.social doi.org/10.5840/pga2...

Banned: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan Yemen. Partial ban: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. #heavenhasawall

Please join us tomorrow for this ISA Theory Section online event in honour and memory of Emma Hutchison and her research contributions.

Fake news. Fake science. Fake universities. Fake government. Fight back.