Updates, Timely Matters, Resources
Welcome to the next edition of the ICSA substack … SO MUCH to cover!
UPDATES
(1) TIME-SENSITIVE: The four-volume foundational encyclopedia moves forward! Early May we will begin sorting through the many proposals and expressions of interest (EOI) we have received so far, so if you’d like to contribute please get in touch soon! The call for papers here: https://icsa.substack.com/p/the-foundational-book-project-launches?utm_source=publication-search. If your interest is in a chapter that likely belongs in Volume 3, please send your EOIs both to me and to Prof. Cary Nelson: crnelson@illinois.edu. His call is here: https://icsa.substack.com/p/from-cary-nelson-a-call-for-contributors.
Remember that up to $2500 is available for accepted chapters!
(2) ICSA now has over 180 scholars on the roster and over 3600 subscribers-followers to the substack, both numbers growing daily. If you’re subscribing and a scholar, or interested in doing scholarly work, and not yet “on the roster,” please reach out! (Independent scholars are welcome, as are graduate students, and we’re also interested in getting undergraduates involved, so please spread the word.)
(3) ICSA is honored by and grateful for our generous seed funding, from the Lauren and Philip Siegel Foundation, which has allowed us to launch our initial projects (including the encyclopedia just mentioned) and should just about get us through 2026-27. But if ICSA is to endure and become a permanent entity beyond this coming year, and thus accomplish its ultimate goals, we will need to raise additional funds. If you know any philanthropists looking for a meaningful project, please do connect us. We have a fiscal sponsor and can happily receive substantial tax-deductible donations through that sponsor (message us for that information). More modest donations, not tax-deductible until we obtain 501c3 status (in progress), can be made via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=ZWEBVMG72W85N.
(4) The fifth installment in ICSA’s webinar series, “Antizionism: The History of an Ideology,” is coming up next week:
Wed. Apr 22, 7-8 PM ET
David Bernstein “The Intellectual Origins and Institutional Power of Progressive Antizionism”
If you can’t make it live, preregistering will get you a link to the recording after ....
(5) Launch of an online support group for academics victimized by antizionism. We received the following:
This is an invitation to join a new online support group for academics who have experienced professional ostracism, silencing, or marginalization, be it due to their Jewish or Israeli identities, their Zionism, or their heterodox opinions on Israel and the Gaza and Iran wars. While our most basic aim is to provide relief from isolation, we also hope to collectively develop strategies to counteract BDS, antisemitism, and the antizionist consensus that has taken over so much of academia — and by extension to protect free inquiry where it is gravely threatened by ideological capture and bigotry.
The group was inaugurated in early 2026 and is still in its formative stage. It is organized by academics based in Europe and involves participants from around the globe. Given the professional risk to many of our participants, we are very mindful of privacy, and only allow individuals to join only through trusted contacts.
Interested persons are welcome to write to Professor Pessin, who will in turn put them in contact with the organizers.
TIMELY MATTERS
(1) An important legal development:
“Jewish Faculty Members at UCLA Say Enough is Enough - File Legal Documents to Join a Federal Lawsuit to Stop Antisemitic Incidents on Campus”
UCLA has been much in the news the past couple of years for its antizionism-antisemitism. While “antisemitism” remains the primary frame for legal matters, though, we are increasingly seeing “antizionism” making its own way into the legal complaints. This is an enormously positive development, in my view. See the press release, and feel free to reach out with words of support to the brave plaintiffs willing to stand up publicly here:
https://www.holtzmanvogel.com/news-insights/jewish-faculty-members-at-ucla-say-enough-is-enough
(2) On the campus front, most of us are aware of the most widely seen (billions of views I think) bit of Congressional testimony ever, when Rep. Stefanik grilled the Ivy presidents and distilled the entire Jew-hating intellectual edifice into that powerful moment, when they revealed that according to the Ivy worldview, openly calling for genocide of the Jews just might be permissible on their campuses. Well now she has published a book, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities.
Ira Stoll, a Harvard alum who has closely documented antizionism-antisemitism at his alma mater over the years, reviews it here:
PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES
(1) Dr. Lori Ullman is co-founder of the MIT Jewish Alumni Alliance, and co-founder of The Jewish Alumni Council, a national coalition of Jewish university alumni and parents. In this piece she lays out an interesting idea toward reforming the academy by establishing the equivalent of an Institutional Review Board. Please give it a read, and if you are interested in collaborating on advancing the project, reach out to her via mitjaa2023@gmail.com.
“Ethics and the Institutional Review Board: The Need for a System of Checks and Balances in Academia and Academic Research”
https://isgap.org/flashpoint/ethics-and-the-institutional-review-board/
(2) Yusof Roso has written an important piece published on the Future of Jewish, a first-rate blog I recommend highly. Ostensibly about New York City Mayor Mamdani’s connections to the Iranian regime, it’s more deeply about the way that antizionism mediates the Islamist ambition to conquer the globe by means of the Western leftist movement. Though not specifically about the campus, it is, in fact, very much about the campus. Let’s also not forget that Mamdani is very much the product of the campus petri dish, and a sign of things to come if we do not get the campus under control.
“Is New York City’s mayor connected to the Iranian regime? Zohran Mamdani’s mosque ties, political alliances, and public actions raise serious questions.”
(3) Finally, a fascinating piece by Ali Saiadatan on the deepest nature of antizionism: it’s not merely “opposition to Israel” but is, in many instances, fueled by truly eschatological ambitions. In my classes the question often comes up: “Israel is this tiny sliver of a land inhabited by this tiny sliver of a people. Even if you think bad things are happening there they are dwarfed by orders of magnitude by the many bad things going on all over the globe, on much larger scales, by much larger countries and populations. Why oh why do so many people spend all their time on this little insignificant sliver?”
Well maybe it isn’t so insignificant, but, indeed, eschatological:
“Eschatological Antizionism: The Battle for the Future of History”
https://www.jns.org/opinion/eschatological-anti-zionism-the-battle-for-the-future-of-history
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That’s it, for now.
Remember: We need teams of scholars producing reams of scholarship about antizionism.
We need ICSA.
Crucial work. Thank you ICSA.