Professor Sounds Alarm on ‘Sea Change’ in American Antisemitism

‘Every single conversation I’ve had since October 7 has been, ‘Did you think you’d ever be living through this in America?’

By Shula Rosen

Professor Pamela Nadell, who was an expert witness in the Congressional hearing on antisemitism on US campuses, decries the “end of public discourse” that has led to a “sea change” and a rise in antisemitism in America.

At the notorious December 5th Congressional hearing during which college presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of MIT equivocated and gave muddled answers to questions on how their administrations deal with antisemitism.

Pamela Nadell was the fourth person to testify at the hearing.

The Times of Israel asked the Chair in Women’s and Gender History and director of the Jewish studies program at American University in Washington, DC what she thought of the college presidents’ responses.

Dr. Nadell replied, “Could I ever have predicted the fallout from that hearing?” she asked rhetorically. “Absolutely not. There was no way.”

In her written testimony, Dr. Nadell wrote, “Antisemitism visible on colleges and universities today is just part of the toxic stew of antisemitism Jews in the US now face.”

She has been called on to testify before Congress three times about antisemitism in America, and acknowledges that campus antisemitism has been developing for a long time and is “not new.”

In her testimony, Dr. Nadell wrote,“I emphasize this because the antisemitism igniting on college campuses today is not new,” she wrote. “It is part of a long history of antisemitism in our nation’s colleges, just one manifestation of the trajectory of antisemitism in American life.”

However, she did say that since October 7th, there has been a different level of awareness of antisemitism than there was before, which has created a “sea change” in how anti-Jewish hate is expressed and identified.

She contrasted current antisemitism with that described in 2012 and 2016 by historian Leonard Dinnerstein who wrote, that antisemitism is “so insignificant that American Jews don’t see it, feel it or hear it — it doesn’t disrupt their daily lives.”

“We’ve seen a sea change,” Nadell told The Times of Israel. “Every single conversation I’ve had since October 7 has been, ‘Did you think you’d ever be living through this in America?’”

Dr. Nadell  added, “We’ve lost a tradition of civil discourse in the United States.”

She continued, “It’s been evident in the two recent hearings I’ve been a part of, and it would be astonishing if we could get leadership to model a tradition of civil discourse.”