The Devil’s Intersectionality: Contemporary Cloaked Academic Antisemitism

Abstract

Over a period of years, a pattern has emerged in anti-Zionist faculty publications that seriously compromises not only the scholars’ credibility and professionalism but also that of academic publishing as a whole. Academia has proceeded for a decade by blindly assuming that basic evaluation procedures like peer review, fact-checking, and copy editing have continued to function reliably. My 2019 book Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, & The Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State uses highly detailed case studies to demonstrate why this is not the case. I summarize those findings here and explore several of the key issues and consequences further. The ferocity of anti-Zionist conviction in these books and essays unfortunately means that they often cross the line into antisemitism. Using examples from work by Jasbir Puar, Sari Makdisi, and others, I demonstrate how distinguished university presses have become purveyors of antisemitism. Keywords: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Peer review, Higher education, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Scholarly publishing, University presses, BDS, Jasbir Puar, Saree Makdisi, Duke University Press, University of Chicago Press, Apartheid