MONTREAL — Academics who study Islamic antisemitism are risking career advancement and younger scholars are shying away from the subject as a result, said Montreal native Charles A. Small, who headed a Yale University program in antisemitism until it was shut down last year amid controversy.
The Oxford-educated Small is currently the Koret Distinguished Scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in California and director of the New York-based Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, which he founded.
While in Montreal to visit family for the holidays, Small gave a talk at the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research. The title summed up the dire situation that Small believes faces Israel, the Jewish community and anyone concerned with the preservation of democracy and human rights: “Incitement to Genocidal Antisemitism: Radical Islam and the Acquiescence of the Western Intellectuals and Policy Makers.”
“If you are critical of a reactionary social movement, somehow you are a racist, a neo-con fascist,” said Small. “The academy in the West is permeated [with this attitude.]”
Regrettably, he added, that view is also found among some Jewish intellectuals.
“Those scholars who have the courage to deal with this issue fear that they will not get jobs, or get promoted, or get published in the right journals… If you go against the grain, you’re out.”
Small blamed a prevailing “liberal, post-colonial” mindset among those running universities, and in some cases, because of funding from Muslim countries, such as the Gulf States.
Small portrayed himself as one of the few western intellectuals today who are saying clearly and publicly that radical Islam – and he includes the Muslim Brotherhood in that term – espouses an antisemitism that ultimately seeks to kill Jews.
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