The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative
The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, in cooperation with the journal Telos, announces a series of programs designed to explore the place of critical theory in the response within higher education to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Our initiative will take place online, in person, and in print.
Beginning in the immediate political aftermath of the Hamas atrocities, theory has been present—in ways that should give us pause. It was present in sublimated ways, as widespread presuppositions and “narratives,” infused with charismatic authority by a popularized “postcolonial” jargon. It was present in kinetic, emotionally charged, intellectually unsophisticated responses in “mass” demonstrations, public statements by groups and institutions, and individual social media campaigns. Yet above all, it was manifest in considered, open, intentional ways within our universities, as well as among educated elites taught and credentialed within them. The American college campus, the traditional home of critical theory—which emerged in the twentieth century most powerfully as a response to fascism and Nazism—has become a nodal point for the dramatic unfolding of a morally and politically deficient discourse about a present-day Kristallnacht.
What can this state of affairs tell us about American higher education? What does it reveal about the fate of “theory” itself, in concrete, practical, and abstract theoretical terms? How does the ritual deployment of certain theoretical vocabularies in response to the attacks help obscure the interests and power of the New Class of managers, information workers, social engineers, and therapeutic organizers, against which Telos has launched a sustained critique since 1968? What does it signify that many members of this powerful strata have learned to conceive of justice and injustice in terms of reified castes in a hierarchy of victimhood, such that racial, ethnic, national, religious, sexual, or gender identity are largely equated with individual moral culpability or innocence? How have theories critical of symbolic violence turned into justifications for actual violence? And how is this justification of actual violence “by any means necessary” emancipated from any ethical constraints? How do macro-level geopolitical concerns provide a larger context for understanding the place of critical theory in the response to October 7?
To explore these and related issues, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute presents: (1) a yearlong webinar series, which takes place on the seventh day of each month beginning at noon Eastern Time; (2) a series of podcasts in which past webinar panelists are interviewed in depth about their views; (3) a series of contributions to TelosScope, the blog of Telos Press; (4) an in-person conference, to take place on November 8–9, 2024, in New York City; and (5) a special issue of the journal Telos, which will build on the conversations we develop online and in person.
Please join us, and please consider supporting our work by becoming a sponsoring member of TPPI.
To contact Gabriel Noah Brahm, Director of TPPI's Israel Initiative, write to brahm at telosinstitute dot net.
Conference
Click here for more details about the in-person conference.
Webinars
Panel 1
Critical Theory in Light of October 7
With Cary Nelson, Abe Silberstein, and Manuela Connsoni
Moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm
January 7, 2024
Panel 2
Historians on Ideology and Politics in the 1948 War: October 7 and the Aftershocks of World War II
With Jeffrey Herf, Matthias Küntzel, and Benny Morris
Moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm
February 7, 2024
Panel 3
Sexual Violence, Feminism, and the Hamas Massacre
With Mariam Memarsadeghi, Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Nina Power
Moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm
March 7, 2024
Panel 4
How to Teach in a (Culture) War: October 7, Antisemitism, and the Academy
With David Tse-Chien Pan, Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki, and John M. Ellis
Moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm
April 7, 2024
Panel 5
Our Troubled Institutions: The End(s) of Higher Education, Post-Journalism, and Antisemitism after October 7
With Russell A. Berman, Gadi Taub, and Paulina Neuding
Moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm
May 7, 2024
Register here!
Podcasts
The TPPI Podcast, Episode 1
“A Range of Theories Engaged with and Challenging Each Other”: A Conversation with Cary Nelson
January 27, 2024
The TPPI Podcast, Episode 2
Frantz Fanon and October 7: A Conversation with Abe Silberstein
February 12, 2024
TelosScope Posts
Israel, Hamas, and Moral Asymmetry
by David Pan
November 7, 2023
The Hamas Massacre Would Have Been Unthinkable without Influences from Nazi Germany: Interview with Martin Cüppers
by Bernhard Junginger
December 18, 2023
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: A Note on Cüppers
by Russell A. Berman
December 18, 2023
Critical Theory as Anti-Emancipatory Project
by Collin May
January 15, 2024
Bibliophobia: The Cancelation of Collin May, an Interview
by Gabriel Noah Brahm
January 19, 2024
Killing Jews and Critical Theory
by Casey Spinks
January 31, 2024
Rounding Up the Bicyclists; Or, Can the Subaltern Please Stop Speaking? A Preface to Spinks
by Gabriel Noah Brahm
January 31, 2024
The University after October 7
by Michael Saenger
February 2, 2024
A Tour of the Aftermath of Israel's Black Sabbath
by Gabriel Mayer-Heft
February 12, 2024
The End of the Academy as We Knew It
by Andrew Pessin
April 22, 2024
From Palestine Avenue to Morningside Heights, the Crisis of the U.S. Academy after October 7: Announcing a New Series of Critical Takes on Higher Education and the Middle East Conflict
by Gabriel Noah Brahm
April 23, 2024
The Proper Limits of Academic Freedom: Lessons from the Unrest at Columbia University
by David Pan
April 24, 2024
Thanks and Acknowledgments
For their support of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, we wish to thank the families of Nancy and Paul Oberman and Lynn and Rabbi Samuel Stahl, who continue the commitments of Lois and Willard Cohodas in support of Holocaust education. Lois and Willard Cohodas dedicated their lives to enhancing respect for humans of all faiths and beliefs, while creating space for understanding and acceptance of the differences and similarities inherent among peoples.
For his essential institutional support, we wish to thank Dr. Robert J. Winn, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Northern Michigan University.
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