The Foundational Book Project Launches!

Call for Papers .....!

The Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism (ICSA) is pleased, so far, at the enthusiastic response to earlier “Calls for Papers” for the upcoming conference slots and the journal — but now comes the big one. Please consider participating in the construction of the foundational encyclopedia of our new field of study. Those contributing will earn up to $2500 for their work. Please email your initial proposals by May 9, 2026, and preferably sooner.

Here is the overall proposal. Please reach out if you are interested in participating, and if you have any questions. Please also share this with potential contributors who may not yet be on the ICSA subscription list.

The Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism presents

Antizionism:

Ideology, Worldview, Movement

Four Volumes

a book proposal and call for papers by Andrew Pessin

andrew.pessin@gmail.com

“Tell me what you accuse Jews of—I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”

Vasily Grossman

The Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism (ICSA)

ICSA is a scholarly enterprise dedicated to producing and disseminating critical scholarship on the origin, evolution, and contemporary manifestations of antizionism as an ideology, a worldview, and a movement. It will be affiliated with a university, and is currently welcoming scholars to join and participate. Already more than 200 scholars have joined, with a substack following of over 3800, and there is a long list of potential projects for the those on the growing roster to produce. ICSA launched with a seven-webinar series that started in December 2025 and continues through May 2026 (“Antizionism: The History of an Ideology”), and is now turning to produce a multi-volume foundational book to serve as an encyclopedia of its subject.

ICSA’s Founding Director is Andrew Pessin, Prof. of Philosophy at Connecticut College. For questions or discussion, please reach out at andrew.pessin@gmail.com

Background to the Proposal: See Appendix below if interested

In the background section below I explain the genesis of the project in a 9000-word essay called “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion” I posted on my substack in May 2025, as well as its overall concept, which might perhaps succinctly be captured in the phrase, “Hitler’s professors, Brezhnev’s professors, Hamas’s professors.” I also explain the reasoning behind focusing specifically on antizionism, apart from whatever relationship antizionism may have to antisemitism.

The Proposed Book

Antizionism: An Ideology, a Worldview, and a Movement

Four Volumes

The book will be an edited collection, including contributions from the scholars with the greatest expertise on the many individual components of the antizionist complex. I will invite some specific scholars and will also do a more general “Call for Papers” to solicit other contributions. Once I have an ample number of commitments I will draft a formal book proposal and find an appropriate academic publisher (I already have several in mind). Here is the working vision of the structure of the book, but of course it will likely evolve over time, particularly in light of proposals from those who answer the “Call for Papers.”

As mentioned in the background, there will be some emphasis throughout on the “scholars”’ role in the antizionist complex, as well as on the many links between the components, in personnel, resources, and scholarship.[1]

Chapters should be between 5000-7000 words each, developed in consultation with the editor. Contributors will receive $2500 per essay, half upon delivery of completed acceptable chapter and half upon publication.

I am ready to work on Volumes 1 and 2 together in the year ahead, and thus solicit proposals specifically for those volumes at this time. If you are perhaps interested in overseeing the production of Volume 3 at this time, please let me know.

I seek scholars interested in writing the chapters below. (And if you have an idea for a chapter that isn’t listed below, please feel free to share it!) Please email your proposals no later than May 31, 2026, and preferably sooner.

Volume 1: The Antizionist Complex

Early Zionism and Pre-State Jewish Anti-Zionism

Russian Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Nazi Antizionism

Soviet Antizionism

Islamism and Muslim Arab Antizionism (Mizrachi experience?) (Distinguish historical, ideological, contemporary?)

Palestinian Antizionism

New Leftist and Contemporary Progressive Antizionism

(Woke) Right Antizionism

AZ in the Democratic Party, in the Republican Party

Christian Antizionism (Left and Right)

Post-State Jewish Antizionism

AZ in the Reform, Reconstruction Movements

Israeli Antizionism

Select International Antizionism: Iran, Qatar, Turkey

Volume 2: More Players in the Antizionist Complex

The United Nations’ Antizionism (Post-1948)

The NGO/Human Rights Antizionist Complex

International Law and Antizionist Lawfare

The BDS Movement

Mainstream News Media’s Antizionism

Wikipedia’s Antizionism

Social Media’s Antizionism

The Entertainment World’s Antizionism

Philanthropic Foundations’ AZ

Progressive Groups’ Antizionism: BLM, Women’s March, Queers for Palestine etc.

Professional Associations’ Antizionism: Medicine, Law, Psychology, etc.

Education, K-12, NEA, Teachers Unions’ Antizionism

The Red-Green Alliance in various domains

Antizionism in the UK, Australia, Europe, South Africa?

Volume 3: The Academy: Hitler’s Professors, Brezhnev’s Professors, Hamas’s Professors

Part I: Key Antizionist Scholars from Nazis, Soviets, Islamists, Arabs (egs Rosenberg, Kichko, Ivanov, Qutb, Sayegh, etc.)

Part II: Ideological Corruption of the Western Academy

The Progressive Capture of the Academy

Middle East Money and the Academy

Case Studies of Specific Universities with an Antizionism Problem: Harvard, Columbia, Penn, small liberal arts, etc.

Case Studies of Specific Disciplines with an Antizionism Problem: Middle East Studies, Anthropology, Women-Gender Studies, etc.

Settler-Colonial Studies

Genocide Studies

University Presses with an Antizionism Problem: Duke UP, etc.

Israel Studies, Jewish Studies’ Antizionism

Students for Justice in Palestine

Faculty for Justice in Palestine

The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism

Key Western Antizionist Scholars

Part III: Theory/Analysis/Praxis

Many possibilities here. Theoretical analysis of the relationship between antizionism and antisemitism: examine continuities, distinctions, reasons for treating antizionism as a distinct form of bigotry from antisemitism. An essay examining the culture of the West (North America and Europe) and how antizionism may be construed as part of a covert Islamist takeover of the West (as the Muslim Brotherhood itself has essentially framed it). An essay on the relationship between theory and praxis: given what we have learned about the origins, history, and logic of antizionism, what are appropriate methods for countering it? And I am excited to reach out to several very talented scholars for suggestions of how or what they might contribute to such a volume. Maybe find someone to read all the other components of the book and offer a concluding analytical overview.

Volume 4: The Data

I will bring aboard one or more experts in the relevant social sciences and empirical work to build this volume. There is much data that has been collected and much data that needs collecting, and it all needs to be brought together in one place. Just how many antizionist professors, students, staff populate our campuses? How dominant is the ideology, the social pressure? What leads individuals, from their many different ethnic, religious, and ideological backgrounds, to become antizionists? In particular, how do those Jews who become antizionists make their way to that position? For those who change their minds—drop antizionism and become friendly to Israel—what are the mechanisms? How prevalent is antizionism in K-12, teachers’ unions, etc.? What is the relationship between political orientation (left, right, Democrat, Republican) and antizionism? More globally, what is the nature and extent of antizionism in Europe, the Middle East, elsewhere? How prevalent are the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, how widely are they believed, ditto for other antisemitic attitudes? There are key questions about who funds everything—global campaigns against Israel, domestic campaigns, campus campaigns, etc. Perhaps empirical work comparing Israel v. its enemies on matters such as ‘ethnostate,’ human rights matters, behavior in war, etc. Perhaps empirical work on antizionist exclusion of Jews in various domains: healthcare, arts, etc.

Subsequently

As mentioned, the books will be foundational, and among the first in a long list of ICSA projects. Most immediately, the books will be the basis for ICSA’s first conference, where many or most of the contributors will gather, in person, “under one roof,” to discuss and amplify the work. They may also serve as the basis for a documentary film meant for distribution beyond the academy, and will also surely spawn further research.

ICSA, in bringing scholars together, will also produce further conferences, journals, podcasts, resources, secondary school curricula, etc.

APPENDIX

Background to the Proposal, and Overall Concept

“Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion: The Global Campaign Against the Jews”

In May 2025 I posted a 9000-word essay called “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion” on my substack. This essay, with its (I believe) catchy title, documents the painful irony of the fact that the extensive scholarly attention rightly paid to the infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a conspiracy theory believed by hundreds of millions or perhaps billions, to this very day, to be factual—obscures the fact that there actually does exist a real conspiracy, a global conspiracy, albeit in precisely the opposite direction.[2] Sometimes working together, sometimes in parallel, sometimes centrally directed, sometimes dispersed, sometimes secretly, sometimes overtly, collectively there is an enormous collection of individuals, organizations, and governments who have all been working toward the same inglorious end for well over a century now. It’s not, per the original Protocols, that the dastardly Jews are conspiring to subjugate or eliminate the peoples of the world. It’s that the peoples of the world (or large constituents thereof) are conspiring to subjugate and (in all too many cases) to outright eliminate the Jews, in particular by means of eliminating their national project, the State of Israel.

As my essay puts it, it’s time to examine their protocols, these Elders of Anti-Zion.

The essay then documents this century-plus-long campaign, taking a tour through the antisemitism and antizionism orchestrated first by the Protocols themselves, then by the Nazis, the Soviets, the Islamists, the Western Left, and others. The emphasis throughout is on the antizionism (for reasons discussed below), and also on the work of the antizionist scholars, the professors, the “scientists,” the ideologues ultimately responsible for formulating and running the campaign. In short, there were “Hitler’s professors,” then “Brezhnev’s professors,” and now “Hamas’s professors.” Although many of the individual actors are well known—the Nazis, Soviets, Islamists, Western Left etc.—there is particular value in bringing them together and conceiving of the entire scheme as a global conspiracy. When you show that literally the same positions, arguments, tactics, tropes, etc. and in some cases even the same personnel, are employed across all the different components you really bring out the ideological (and indeed conspiratorial) nature of the antizionism and, ultimately, its antisemitic foundation and nature.

For just one concrete example: the Nazis and Soviets both established “scientific institutes” to “study the Jewish Question” and/or “Zionism,” i.e. produce the bogus “science” that justified and motivated the Final Solution and/or the destruction of Israel. Every decent person today sees those endeavors for the blatantly antisemitic endeavors they are, corrupting or weaponizing scholarship to nefarious political ends. Yet today, as we speak, the “Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism” (ICSZ) has been established in the United States, which, in isolation, might appear to be a legitimate scholarly enterprise devoted to “science.” But when you put it in the context of the global campaign you immediately see that everything about it—from its name to its methods to its ideologies to its conferences—directly echoes the Nazi and Soviet and Islamist campaigns against the Jews. Suddenly it becomes blatantly clear that the ICSZ is no ordinary scholarly enterprise, but, like its Nazi and Soviet forebears, an antisemitic endeavor weaponizing scholarship to nefarious political ends. Indeed, in 1944, for just one example (of so many), the Nazis organized an international anti-Jewish congress whose aim was to reach “the intellectual stratum of the European peoples who up to now could not be won by simple anti-Jewish propaganda,”[3] and whose overall design, agenda, and methods sound like they were taken off the website of ICSZ.

Hitler’s professors, Brezhnev’s, Hamas’s, indeed.

It’s powerful stuff.

As I finished this essay I had three important insights:

(1) How incomplete it was. There remain numerous other significant players in the antizionist complex (per Jacques Givet’s memorable phrase), including the United Nations, the international NGO network, the media, social media, and, coarsely speaking, the Western academy as a whole as it has become swallowed by antizionist ideology. I realized that properly documenting and understanding this complex requires adding quite a lot more material.

(2) I saw there was great value in focusing specifically on antizionism, i.e. on opposition to the Jewish national endeavor as manifest in the State of Israel. Indeed this project offers something quite new. So much time, money, and effort has been spent battling antisemitism on campus, including (a) insisting that antizionism is antisemitism, (b) trying to promote the IHRA definition of antisemitism (which allows that antizionism may be antisemitism), even (c) trying to work within the DEI structure under its mandate against antisemitism. I don’t want to say that that campaign has been a failure; but it has been a failure. DEI remains hostile to Israel and Jews; the IHRA definition, even where adopted after great battles, has proved useless in stopping the hatred, and while all of those on our side agree that antizionism is antisemitism, the haters have so effectively insisted on the distinction that they can keep on hating, under the label antizionism, without being disturbed. Indeed the haters themselves established the ICSZ, a straightforward hate-think tank that is baldly producing antizionist propaganda under the guise of “scholarship” and no one seems to bat an eye. This Nazi-Soviet style “institute” is the immediate inspiration for forming ICSA as a countermeasure, to resist the haters’ growing grip on our meaning-making institutions.

While Israel-friendly scholars have spent much time defending Zionism from the many libels levied against it, and promoting Zionism in a positive way, what we have not done in a collective organized way is go after the antizionist ideology that has done so much damage to the academy and to the standing of Israel and the Jews therein. Thus the turn to “critical scholarship on antizionism,” and as for the move to focus specifically on antizionism—Shany Mor gave a powerful case for the idea in a talk I heard as I was finishing the essay, Judea Pearl has long advocated for focusing on “Zionophobia” as its own specific bigotry, and Adam Louis-Klein has been keenly articulating the DNA of antizionism itself—but just briefly:

(i) Antizionism really has its own history, internal logic, its own characteristics, its own tactics and methods, with profound roots in and relationships to world-historical ideologies, all of which have been inadequately studied;

(ii) There is value in exposing antizionism as problematic, objectionable, corrupt etc. in its own right, apart from whatever relationship it has to antisemitism—not least because many people deny that it is a form of antisemitism and so close their ears when you claim it is, believing you are merely “covering for Israel”;

(iii) Antizionism of course is the major form antisemitism (or Jew-hatred) has taken since modern political Zionism launched in 1896, as well as serving as the major method of masking underlying antisemitism. Focusing directly on it is one way of exposing it for what it is (see (v));

(iv) “Zionism” has become a toxic word in today’s infosphere, particularly on campuses. Exposing the systematic way it was deliberately turned toxic could begin reclaiming it and its proper positive connotations, as the national liberation movement of the Jews;

(v) As noted above, I believe that it is not only apt but also could be quite effective to cast antizionism as an international campaign or conspiracy against the Jews. Once this web is exposed then today’s antizionism, now revealed to be the continuation (quite literally) of the Nazi, Soviet, and Islamist elimination projects, wears its antisemitism on its sleeve; and

(vi) It is the only way to counter the all too common argument: “But so many countries, so many international organizations, so many NGOs, so many international legal bodies, etc., condemn Israel for its many crimes. Can the whole world be wrong?” To expose the antizionist complex as an international conspiracy is the only way reasonably to answer that question: Yes, the whole world can be wrong, and generally is, when there is a global campaign against the Jews.

(3) The essay reads almost like the précis of a book. And so it clearly should become a book.

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[1] For example after World War 2 several Nazis moved to Muslim Arab countries and continued their Nazi campaign from there, and Soviet direct support for Muslim Arab antizionism is well established. There are also straight lines from today’s progressive Left back to the Soviet Union, and there is today’s “red-green alliance,” etc.

[2] Though one could be more nuanced about the word “conspiracy” here, I believe there is real value in analyzing the campaign against the Jews through a “conspiracy” lens.

[3] Weinrich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People (1999/1946, Yivo Institute for Jewish Research), p. 221.)