Kenneth S. Stern
By Kenneth S. Stern
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Opinion Biden’s pick for antisemitism envoy will need to answer these tough questions
Sometime soon, President Biden will likely nominate a candidate for the Department of State’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. Regardless of who is selected, the envoy-designee will be asked at their confirmation hearing what they think of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by many governments,…
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Community Is there any good time to publish a book during a pandemic?
“Timing is everything.” Larry Cohler-Esses wrote that line in 1995 in a Forward news story about my book contract with Simon and Schuster. I was the American Jewish Committee’s expert on antisemitism at the time. I had written a report on the militia movement ten days before the Oklahoma City bombing predicting attacks on government…
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Letters Letter to the Editor: I Was at the Bard Anti-Semitism Panel, and Saw Deep Disagreement, not Singling Out of Jews
This article is a response to an article one published on Saturday night by Batya Ungar Sargon, Opinion Editor of The Forward. You can read the original article here. Forty-eight years ago, as a first-year student at Bard College, I saw graffito in a bathroom stall: “If I didn’t believe it with my own mind,…
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Opinion How Trump Empowers White Supremacists and Jihadis Alike
Two actions by the Trump administration, intended to make us safer, instead leave us more vulnerable to attack. The administration reportedly wants to rename the federal Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) task force as Countering Islamic Extremism or Countering Radical Islamic Extremism. Doing so would empower white supremacists and jihadis alike. This follows the Executive Order…
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Opinion What If Matthew Shepard’s Murder Wasn’t an Anti-Gay Hate Crime?
How important is historical truth? The obvious answer is “very.” Just think of Holocaust denial, which is anti-Semitism built upon historical distortions. But what if an effort to counter hate is based on an inspirational story — and that story is a lie? That’s the moral quandary at the heart of journalist Steve Jimenez’s newly…
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Opinion When Bullying of Jewish Students Masks Ugly Anti-Semitism
Last year, Jewish high school students from Queens told me, almost as an aside, that classmates roll pennies in front of them. Two years ago, a group of high school students from the Binghamton, N.Y., area told me they were called “cheapie,” had to listen to chants of “Heil Hitler” and “Nazi,” and were kicked…
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