R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has received a grant from the Luce Foundation to create a podcast on the history of American antisemitism. It’s a sobering subject, and one where the American people truly need a better historical perspective.
In episodes that take listeners from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, the team will unpack instances or aspects of antisemitism in U.S. history through narration, primary sources, and expert interviews. These stories will discuss what antisemitism is and how it developed and persisted alongside other forms of bigotry and hatred in the United States. Each episode will relate to the project’s broad themes: that antisemitism is a deep-rooted American problem, that it spans the political and religious spectrum of the United States, that it is intertwined with the history of race in America, and that knowledge and understanding of the history of American antisemitism makes it easier to identify and oppose it in the present.
With the support we have received, we have lined up a collaboration with other scholars, including Zev Eleff, who will lead our editorial board, and Mark Oppenheimer, who will be the podcast’s host. (We have more collaborators to come, we hope.) You can read more about the podcast, which we will be working on over the coming year.
