Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism - Magda Teter

In 2017 in Charlottesville, antisemitism and anti-Black racism converged as white supremacists, in a highly choreographed and violent protest against the removal of a statue honoring a Confederate general, carried Confederate flags and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” In this talk, Magda Teter, the author of Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism, will explain the deep roots of that connection and explore the interplay between Christian theology and law to demonstrate how legal and theological frameworks created centuries ago have led to the creation of social hierarchies, legal exclusion of and a denial of equality to Jews and Black people also in modern times.

Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2006), Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011: a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize), Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020: National Jewish Book Award, The George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (Princeton, 2023), and of articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Teter has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the HF Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, the Cullman Center at the NYPL, and the NEH. She has served as the co-editor of the AJS Review and as the VP for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies. Teter is currently the President of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 4 PM

Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism
Naftulin Family Program on Studies in Jewish Identity

Magda Teter (Fordham)
Moderator: David N. Myers (UCLA)