Indiana University researchers were awarded a $6 million grant to study modern antisemitism – the largest grant this cycle from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The NEH said the project aligns with last year’s executive order by President Trump on fighting antisemitism.
The IU Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism said it will use the money to “train educators, journalists and public officials to recognize antisemitic rhetoric” and create scholarship that can be used to inform public policy.
It will also host two international conferences in Bloomington and study how antisemitism circulates online.
The institute’s director Alvin Rosenfeld said antisemitism has accelerated since the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the country’s ensuing war in Gaza.
“Right now what we're looking at is not, for the most part, driven by religion or racist theory, but political, ideological, and very highly personal and emotional,” Rosenfeld said. “Once that passion is unrestrained and let loose, it’s very, very difficult to curb.”
Significant debate remains on the relationship between antisemitism and antizionism, or opposition to the state of Israel. The question of whether Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza is a particularly contentious point – one endorsed by the United Nations, Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders but rejected by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, whose examples of antisemitism Rosenfeld said he finds important.
“One of those is comparing Israel to Nazi Germany antisemitic,” he said. “Do I agree with that? Yes, of course I agree with it. Do I think that accusing Israel of genocide is antisemitic? Yes, I do.”
But Rosenfeld said researchers will not spend time defining antisemitism. Rather, they will focus on how to address it.
“We don't have one line in particular that we're looking to have people endorse,” Rosenfeld said. “What we do have is a great deal of accumulating, accelerating hatred of Jews, including of the Jewish state in some cases.”
