Lessons for the Trump Administration from the Biden U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism

In May 2023, the Biden Administration issued the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism with a goal of hindering further normalization of antisemitism by increasing public awareness of antisemitism and highlighting positive Jewish contributions to America. Recent events, however, particularly the social and political upheaval over protests of the war in Gaza, have led to public contestation over Israel, increased instances of antisemitism, and the partisan politicization of Jewish issues. All this has raised questions about whether the National Strategy\u27s assumptions about public attitudes, the viability of antisemitism awareness initiatives, and the possibility of whole-of-society agreement on countering antisemitism continue to be valid and relevant. The change at the White House with the election of Donald Trump as President also raises the question of whether the Biden Administration\u27s National Strategy will survive. This Article argues that rather than scrapping the antisemitism awareness goal of the National Strategy, the current moment instead reinforces the need to focus effectively on antisemitism awareness. It calls on the Trump Administration to commit to the anti-antisemitism goals of the National Strategy. Investing in effective antisemitism awareness initiatives is critical, not only because of the threat of increasing antisemitism for American Jews but also because research shows that antisemitism generalizes to other outgroups and because antisemitism is a central element of the white nationalism that threatens American society and democracy as a whole. The true question, then, is what kind of antisemitism awareness initiatives are likely to be effective. Is the National Strategy still the right approach? The National Strategy document is to be commended for its reframed take on Holocaust education in school. Because education happens as much outside school as inside, the National Strategy is also right that anti-antisemitism initiatives in the arts, cultural life, and the press could be helpful. However, this Article argues that operationalizing the National Strategy\u27s approach requires a much more intensive focus on affective, emotion-focused initiatives in Holocaust education than is now explicit in the document. The Article also suggests that any call to anti-antisemitism in culture and media must confront both the structural factors in the arts and news coverage that tend to stereotype and reinforce antisemitic tropes, as well as the complex history of antisemitism in American media and the arts. Ultimately, as the National Strategy recognizes, further and continuing empirical research is needed to help ground such anti-antisemitism initiatives

Never Again: Zionism and the Jewess

The State of Israel was established, in part, to ensure that Jews would never again be killed with impunity. More specifically, the State of Israel was established to ensure that never again would Jewish women and girls be systematically raped, assaulted, violated, and mutilated in a pogrom-like attack against the Jewish people. It is well known that the sweep of history connects Jews with the land of Israel from ancient times to today and serves as an important foundation for political Zionism. Less understood is that the atrocities against Jewish women and girls, committed over thousands of years and across continents, tore a primal wound in the Jewish psyche and galvanized the Zionist vision of a return to Jewish statehood and self-determination. Never again is an unwritten Zionist promise, a covenant, established between the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Hamas’s October 7th attack tested this sacred Zionist promise. This article is an exploration of why political Zionism made that promise and how October 7th tested it

Replace The Jew --The Visible Invisibility of American Antisemitism And Spoken Beliefs

This is an essay that attempts to provide a contemporary take on antisemitism from the perspective of a professor of employment discrimination

Carried Interest: Recent Tax Holding Envisions Need For New Legislation

In the financial world, carried interest represents the share of the profits of a private equity fund allocated to its manager which is disproportionate when compared to the manager’s relative capital contribution. On May 3, 2023 the Tax Court issued its memorandum opinion in ES NPA Holding, LLC v. Commissioner. The decision quickly became popularized as providing reassurance to sponsors of private equity funds that they will rarely, if ever, realize income as a result of the issuance of a profits/carried interest (the so-called front-end issue for carried interest). The so-called back-end issue is how the income arising from a carried interest is taxed when the profits are realized. This article describes carried interest’s so-called front-end history from the 1970s, noting the Treasury’s, scholars’, and courts’ recognition of an unresolved reciprocal relationship between the front-end and back-end issues, that being that the receipt of a profits interest is a type of deferred compensation. Most of the proposed carried interest legislation and scholarship recognized this. The article then asks whether the tax court’s recent decision has settled doctrine with respect to the front-end taxation of carried interest. It concludes that cryptic messages in the Tax Court’s opinion indicates that it did not and that the opinion hiddenly asks for Congress to resolve the reciprocity

White Christian Nationalism & Antisemitism: A True Threat

The ideology of Jewish hatred, also known as antisemitism, has deep roots. In the United States, antisemitism has known a long and complicated history; in the early 1940s, it reached peak levels. Now, more than 80 years later, antisemitism again rears its ugly head, aiming to end the Golden Age of American Jewry. The exclusionary ideology aiming to obliterate the wall separating Church and state, and to institutionalize Christian identity and values into the public square, also known as White Christian Nationalism, has deep roots. In the United States, it had a long and complicated history; by the mid 1920s, it reached its peak powers with millions of followers, including possibly a Supreme Court justice. Now, more than a century later, White Christian Nationalism again rears its ugly head, aiming at challenging the very notion of American democracy. This time, however, its loyal adherents come well-prepared, armed with no less than a former President seeking to reclaim his awesome powers; a group of U.S. Representatives including the House Speaker himsel; and, yet again, possibly a Supreme Court Justice. These two ideologies‚ Antisemitism, and White Christian Nationalism, are now on a collision course. More accurately, White Christian Nationalism aims at raising the level of antisemitism in the U.S. to new heights. With direction from the Supreme Court\u27s recent jurisprudence, this Article begins the conversation on how the law may be of help in limiting the hurtful effects of WCN on America\u27s Jewish community