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Contexts Of Freedom

MSU professor gives view of modern anti-Semitism,
minority discrimination at campus roundtable.

Marisa Meyerson } special to the Jewish News

A

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s college students, my peers and I
have learned about human rights and

Hebdo incident" and not as a separate hate
crime. She explained there is insufficient

equality throughout school. From an

acknowledgement of minority circumstances

early age, our history topics have ranged from
the Civil Rights Movement to the Holocaust. To

and their feelings, creating a lack of abil-
ity to express collective identity as a school,

us, they were a thing of the past — only now
we are experiencing events that question all

synagogue or organization for fear they will
become an even larger target.

the progress we thought we had made.
At Michigan State University, the "Contexts

As the roundtable moved into an open
discussion, I posed the question, "Considering

of Freedom Series: Violence, Resistance and
Identity Politics from Ferguson to Paris," played

what we know about Jewish values and mor-
als, what is the Jewish response to violence,

out as a roundtable dialogue Feb. 12 between

resistance and discrimination? Where do we

several faculty members from MSU and the
University of Michigan-Dearborn. Topics

start with situations like the incident in Paris?"
Aronoff responded with an explanation of

focused on such issues as police brutality and
excessive force, the racialization of the judicial

our global attitude regarding anti-Semitism.
"It's a learning moment in terms of looking

system, anti-Semitism and hate crimes in a
global setting as well as the fast-growing epi-

at the gravity of anti-Semitism globally. The
first thing that needs to be done is to recog-

demic of Islamophobia.

nize it and acknowledge it because so much

Panelist Dr. Yael Aronoff, director of MSU's
Jewish Studies Program and Michael and
Elaine Serling and Friends Chair of Israel
Studies who teaches at James Madison

of the discussion of Charlie Hebdo leaves out
the naming of a hate crime. There has to be
recognition of the statistics that are accumulat-
ing, that prove and document the dangerous

College, said her interest in the panel is in
examining the vulnerability of minorities in the
U.S. and abroad, looking for commonalities
between various minorities and their respective
incidents as they occur in current events.
Her approach to thinking about the events
in Ferguson and Paris is an attempt to find a
common bond among minority groups in order
to motivate them to work together to combat
minority discrimination.
Part of the discussion focused on the killing
of the four French Jews in the kosher super-
market attack two days after the Charlie Hebdo
incident. A panelist asked whether the killings
were really anti-Semitic or simply anti-Zionist.
Aronoff fiercely countered this argument, and
said she was offended by the trivialization and
dismissal of anti-Semitism in exchange for anti-
Zionism, as anti-Semitism is highly documented
and very much prevalent in societies today.
She argued it is anti-Semitic itself to refer
to these killings simply as "part of the Charlie

trend happening in Europe. One has to be
wary of distraction, that often anti-Semitism in
Europe is trivialized, or erased, or ignored, and
people start talking about Jews as oppressors
as opposed to taking seriously the danger and
vulnerability Jews are in."
Aronoff continued to explain that even in
the United States, the issue of anti-Semitism is
often minimized and forgotten, as a growing
number of college campuses experience anti-
Semitism with the perpetrators carrying the
incorrect justification that because the Jewish
people are doing well, we aren't a minority
anymore, and are therefore subject to frivolous
hate and discrimination.
Aronoff ended by saying we must not "fab-
ricate improvement," as these issues need to
be taken seriously, regardless of any improve-
ment within the global Jewish community. @

Marisa Meyerson of Farmington Hills is a

freshman at Michigan State University.

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36 February 19 • 2015

JN

Panelists pose at the Contexts of Freedom event at
MSU; Yael Aronoff of MSU is on the right.

