The Chicago Principles Took a Sick Day at UChicago’s Anti-Semitism Roundtable

On Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Professor Kenneth Moss, one of the University of Chicago’s (UChicago) more prominent Jewish historians and a Yiddishist, presided over the anti-Semitism roundtable held at the Franke Institute for the Humanities in Regenstein Library. The room was nearly packed when the roundtable began, with students and faculty attending from all over the school—the Divinity School was especially well-represented.

The first speaker and honored guest, whose speech would take fully half the time of the roundtable, was Michael S. Roth, the President of Wesleyan University. Roth would spend the bulk of his time minimizing the issue of anti-Semitism on campus and saying that Trump was taking advantage of the issue and Jews for his own purposes. “90 percent of the [pro-Palestinian] protests ended peacefully,” said Roth, and also “I never experienced anti-Semitism on my campus.” Sure, “they shouted ‘murderer’ at me, but this was because of [what] the university [was doing], not because I was Jewish.”

Can Roth really be so sure? That is quite the generous take from someone who never clarified with the shouter the reasons he was being screamed at.

It seems that classifying the pro-Palestinian movement as one that would generate anti-Semitism, resulting in the above incident, would go against Roth’s preconceived notions of the make-up of the pro-Palestinian movement. “There were a lot of Jews inside the [Wesleyan] encampment, possibly more inside than out of it,” said Roth, in another totally unsubstantiated turn.

Roth seemed more suspicious of the Trump administration than of anyone perpetuating anti-Semitism, or even anti-Semitism itself. We “shouldn’t side with people who don’t care about civil rights and expect that our civil rights will be respected,” said Roth in a particularly damning moment, and similarly, “Trump has brought together a coalition of [many different] factions that [agree about the Jews] for now.”

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Perhaps if students at Wesleyan also put up an “art installation” like the one featured at UChicago, but with blood coming out of Roth’s eyes rather than those of the UChicago board? Or maybe if Roth were to have his house smeared with red paint meant to evoke bloody handprints by pro-Palestinian activists, like what happened at one of the University of California, Los Angeles regents’ house? Even then, it seems likely that he would classify these as incidents of speaking truth to power rather than anti-Semitism.

The roundtable moved to the discussion session with the rest of the professors. Moss spoke first, tracing some of the Jewish characterization of antisemitism to incidents in the late 19th century. Prof. Orit Bashkin spoke about the history of anti-Zionism and attempted to minimize the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world by bringing a few outlying positive examples that did not seem adequate to counter the long history of anti-Semitism in that region, including the dhimmi status, the Islamic conquest, and the 20th century forced expulsion of Jews from Muslim lands. But the real substance of the discussion came from Professors Sarah Hammerschlag and Na’ama Rokem.

Both of these professors denigrated the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, saying that it was too broad, allowed for Jews to be classified as anti-Semitic when they criticized Israel, and conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Rokem advocated for the Jerusalem definition, of which she was one of the signatories, as an alternative. At the end of the talk, it became clear that these professors possessed more than an academic interest in these definitions, as one allowed for blistering critique of Israel in a way that the other did not. Hammerschlag offered absolute evidence of such leanings as the conclusion to her remarks when she called Israel a “fascist” state.

Rokem harbored particular ire for the way the Heritage Foundation had approached anti-Semitism, taking aim at the authors of Project Esther for being “non-Jews who [in the first few pages of the report] accuse Jews of being complacent” in dealing with the issue of anti-Semitism. The Esther story had resulted in the “killing of 10,000 Persians,” the parallel she was drawing between that and Gaza being unmistakable.

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Undoubtedly, even though in the Purim story the wicked Haman had designed to wipe out the Jews completely, this did not represent sufficient cause for the Jews to rise up and defend themselves. Even then, Rokem seemed to imply, Jews were invested in harming indigenous populations in ways that did not abide by social justice standards.

When the panel was asked what they would do–on a practical level–to stop anti-Semitism, much jollity ensued, with some quipping that they would generate “more theory.” This is in keeping with the UChicago joke, “we know how it works in practice, but how does it work in theory?” and perhaps was to be expected from die-hard academics.

However, the real tragedy of the roundtable was the uniformly anti-Zionist and anti-Trump perspective of the professors and guests at an institution that supposedly prides itself on the Chicago Principles —a commitment to free speech and vigorous debate, even to the point of being “uncomfortable.” It did not seem as though this panel had respect for the Chicago Principles, especially given that the one faculty member who might have offered a different perspective chose not to participate. Professor Sheila Jelen, who has publicly acknowledged Hamas as a terrorist organization and who has a nephew in the Israeli army, might have actually spoken to the real threat of antisemitism and the need for Zionism had she been able to speak.

Unfortunately, this did not happen, even as Michael S. Roth’s speaking portion of the event stretched on for upwards of an hour. Clearly, the upper reaches of UChicago, as much as the lower, warrant the ADL’s D rating for anti-Semitism on its campus. As one UChicago community member who attended the event remarked, “I appreciate and respect the scholarly expertise and years of historical research that the speakers brought to the topic. However, I wish that the event had spent more time discussing a possible definition of anti-Semitism and how to combat it in academia effectively and legally, instead of excusing it and downplaying it.”

Image by Eli Navi