Anti-Anti-Semitism: A Fight for Whom?

We should all be glad that the world's most powerful states no longer subscribe to anti-Semitic ideology, but to the fight against it. Or should we? In Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism (2020) I argued that the opposition to anti-Semitism has come to object not only to thinking against Jews, but to thinking about Jews at all. Paradoxically, in defending Jews, it has turned away from Jewish thought — and so, at times, has come dangerously close to the very anti-Semitism it opposes. In recent years, as the fight against anti-Semitism has become a central justification for the exercise of exceptional state power, the stakes of this paradox have grown urgent. This lecture takes up that question. Who is the fight against? Who is it for? And what does it do to Jews and Jewishness today?

Elad Lapidot is Full Professor and Chair of Hebraic and Jewish Studies at the University of Lille. His work lies at the intersection of Jewish thought, continental philosophy, and political theory, with particular attention to the politics of knowledge, anti-Semitism, and the Israel/Palestine question. He is the author of Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism (SUNY Press, 2020), State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel (Indiana University Press, 2025) and most recently No Logos: Exilic Theory of Talmud (De Gruyter, 2026). He has held positions at the University of Bern and the Freie Universität Berlin, andrecently served as Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.

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Cosponsored by the Department of Religion & Classics.