Adam Kirsch, poet, critic and editor at the Wall Street Journal, discusses his widely debated book, On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice. The settler-colonialism prism, especially in the wake of October 7, is a textbook example of the use and abuse of academic theories for political ends – how and why has it come to be? Kirsch offers an historical genealogy as well as a contemporary analysis.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.

Guy Miron, professor of modern European Jewish history at the Open University of Israel, and the director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust in Germany at Yad Vashem and a board member of the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, discusses his most recent book, Space and Time Under Persecution: The German-Jewish Experience in the Third Reich.

Dr Ido Yahel, a postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, is a historian of modern Syria. An ethnic hodgepodge, was the decades-long stability provided by the brutal Assad regime an exception rather than the rule? Can Syria reinvent itself under the leadership of a reformed (at least partially) radical Islamist?

Hear the full episode on Patreon

Prof. Jonthan Dekel-Chen, Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University and the academic chairman of the Nevzlin Center for Russian and East European Jewry, takes a long view on the history of Jews in Russia and its past and present territories, from the turn of the 20th century to the 21st.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry.

Dr Amit Levy, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa's Department of Israel Studies, discusses his book, A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel.

The October 7 events seemed, initially at least, to put the government's plans for a judicial overhaul on the back burner. But under the guise of wartime emergency regulations, the government has slipped back to its old habits.

As Prof. Suzie Navot, a scholar of constitutional law and Vice-President of the Israel Democracy Institute, explains, the judicial overhaul is now returning in a much more circumspect (and therefore ominous) manner than before.

Dr Rona Aviram, a scientist, and Omer Benjakob, a journalist – both fellows at Brandeis University's Institute of Advanced Israel Studies – discuss Wikipedia's bumpy road towards becoming the go-to source of knowledge online.

This episode is part of a series in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Israel Studies at Brandeis University.

Dr Anna Kushkova, an anthropologist, postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry, discusses her research on Jewish underground entrepreneurial networks in the Soviet Union.

This episode is made possible by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry.

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William Kolbrener and Ronit Eitan, literary scholars at Bar Ilan University, are the founders of Writing on the Wall, an online platform for an open and diverse conversation, and co-editors of Balagan, a magazine of Art, Poetry and Perspective that launched earlier this year. What is the power of literature and writing to mitigate times of crisis?

Neta Shoshani's documentary film 1948: Remember, Remember Not was commissioned by Kan, Israel's public broadcaster for the country's 75th Independence Day. Almost two years on, it has yet to be broadcast, in the wake of a right-wing campaign that claims that it defames Israel. In this episode, she talks about the interplay between history, memory and public knowledge.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.