Reckoning with October 7: How to Teach in a (Culture) War

"How to Teach in a (Culture) War: October 7, Antisemitism, and the Academy" is the fourth webinar in the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute's yearlong series reckoning with the response to the atrocities on October 7. This panel features David Tse-Chien Pan, Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki, and John M. Ellis, and it was moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm. The discussion took place on April 7, 2024. For more information about TPPI's Israel Initiative, visit our website.

David Tse-Chien Pan is the Editor of Telos and Professor of German at the University of California-Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from Columbia University and has taught at Washington University (St. Louis), Stanford University, and Penn State University. He is the author of Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (University of Nebraska Press, 2001) and Sacrifice in the Modern World: On the Particularity and Generality of Nazi Myth (Northwestern University Press, 2012).

Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki is an historian of Modern Europe by training, co-founder and editor of Tel Aviv Review of Books, a fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute, and Jewish educator in the fields of Jewish and world history, and interethnic and interreligious relations. Fluent in French, German, and Spanish, as well as Hebrew, she has translated academic works from French to English and brought together scholars and perspectives from these different cultural realms—including diaspora communities within them—in her work as an editor and educator. She has also contributed as a researcher and consultant to the work of a number of NGOs dedicated to intergroup and interreligious encounters. She is currently finishing a book on universal law in the Jewish tradition as an alternative to human rights.

John M. Ellis is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, chair of the California Association of Scholars, and the author of eleven books, the most recent of which is The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done. His other books about the reform of academia include Against Deconstruction (1989) and Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities (1997).

Topics: Webinars • Israel Initiative