Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Raşel Meseri

Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Anna Ruth Henriques

Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Colette Capriles

Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Dafne Beri

Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Doreen Alhadeff

Spanish & Portuguese Citizenship Oral Histories: Eduardo Avila

Prof. Devin Naar speaks in Greek and Ladino at Aristotle University, Autumn 2014.

Prof. Devin Naar Speaks in Greek and Ladino

Media and political attention are focused on college campuses, and Jews figure prominently in these debates. Jewish Studies programs now find themselves at ground zero of public debates around academic freedom, antisemitism, and the role of higher education.

On March 11, 2025, philosopher Dr. Gilah Kletenik and historian Dr. Devin E. Naar engaged in a conversation moderated by Dr. Daniel Heller to reflect on key questions provoked by our current moment. The event took place on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington.

Today's Campus Conflicts and the Future of Jewish Studies

Benmayor Collection: El Paso del Mar Rojo

Doctoral student Emily Gade discusses her research on radicalization, terror attacks, resiliency against violence, and the factors that influence how people respond to trauma. In particular, she examines the work of the Israeli recovery organization ZAKA and the perspectives of its volunteer workers.

Emily Gade is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on civilians in conflict zones, political violence, and nonviolent resistance.

Violence, Militancy & How Civilians React- Emily Gade

George Watt: Our tradition of activism

Yandım Tokat Yandım (I'm Burned Tokat I'm Burned) - Mary Vartanian

Özleyiş (Longing) - Columbia Tango Orchestra

The United States was the country where Jews came to finally be free from anti-Semitism... or was it? Historians of the modern era tend to think of the U.S. as an exceptional place for Jews — a place where Jewish people have been able to exist in relative freedom from violence and prejudice.

But is this common understanding of the United States as "the exception" accurate? In this episode, guest Susan A. Glenn discusses the history of anti-Semitism in the U.S., touching on the Second Ku Klux Klan, anti-Semitic industrialist Henry Ford, the "mother of all conspiracy theories," the secret rehabilitation of Nazi war criminals, and the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the U.S. in the present day.

In this five-part inaugural season of "Jewish Questions," the Stroum Center's podcast series, hosts Laurie Marhoefer and Noam Pianko delve into the causes and consequences of anti-Semitism across history with faculty experts from the University of Washington.

Episode 1: Anti-Semitism in the United States

We generally connect Germany with anti-Semitism, but in the early twentieth century, Germany was actually considered one of the best places in the world to be Jewish. How and why did the progressive Weimar Republic give way to the genocidal Nazi regime... and could it happen here?

In this episode, guest Laurie Marhoefer explains the rise of the Nazi party in one of the one progressive places in the world, detailing the swift and dramatic shift in government, efforts to resist, and troubling echoes of these events in the present day.

Episode 2: The Rise of Nazi Germany

Has anti-Semitism always been the same, or have ideas about Jewishness, and suspicion towards Jews, changed over time? 

In this episode, guest Ana Gómez-Bravo explores these questions by looking at the lives of Jews and "conversos" (Jewish converts to Christianity) in medieval Spain, explaining how Catholic authorities tried to define and restrict their Jewish and converso residents, in a conversation that spans medieval medicine, forbidden breastfeeding, decoy hams, official guides to Jewishness, and the expulsion of Jews in 1492.

Episode 3: Being Jewish in Medieval Spain

Can Jews be anti-Semitic against other Jews? In this episode, guest Devin E. Naar looks at the history of Jewish prejudice against other Jews in the United States, from the very first American Jewish settlers in the 1600s to twentieth-century efforts to exclude Jews from the Muslim world from Jewish institutions — as the American Jewish community struggled to hold on to its "precarious whiteness."

Episode 4: Jewish Anti-Semitism?

Present-day discussions of anti-Semitism often involve Israel and the Zionist movement... but before the 20th century, Jews' and Jewish scholars' understandings of anti-Semitism were completely connected with Europe and Christianity.

In the final episode of the season, guest Liora R. Halperin looks at how 19th-century Jewish settlers to Palestine were influenced by the anti-Semitism they had experienced in the Russian Empire: how it shaped their perceptions of their new home (or didn't), and what we can learn from their story today.

Episode 5: Before Zionism

Jewish Questions is the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies' podcast on issues that matter now in Jewish life, politics, history and culture — from a scholarly perspective. This season, hosts Laurie Marhoefer and Noam Pianko look at anti-Semitism: what it is, its long history, and how we can push back against it today.

The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies is a part of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

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