International relations professor organizing the 2025 Conference on the Jewish Left, happening this Friday, Feb. 28 at BU
The 2025 Conference on the Jewish Left, aimed at bringing diverse representatives of the Jewish community together to give the public access to educated speakers on issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict, will take place at Boston University on February 28 from 8:15 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a packed schedule including speaker segments and cultural celebrations. Click here to register.
The conference welcomes speakers Simone Zimmerman, the protagonist in the film Israelism; Omar Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University; and Adam Seligam, professor of religion at BU, along with many other accomplished academics, writers, artists, and poltical activists.
The bright mind behind the event is Jeremy Menchik, associate professor of international relations and political science at BU, and director of its Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA).
Professor Menchik is an individual intrigued by the idea of ideas, leading to his research focusing on religion and international affairs. From growing up going to Jewish summer camp, spending the warmer months in Israel, Turkey, and Tunisia, and living for three years in Indonesia, he has a large toolbox filled to the brim with experiences he looks to utilize as a source for developing productive conversation surrounding contemporary issues.
What motivated you to become involved with CURA?
I was hired in large part to run CURA. Social science training means we learn how to do surveys, analysis, and work with archival sources and religion. It’s more the matter of transcendence. I was working on Islam in Indonesia, and in order to do that work, I’m trained as a social scientist, so I’ve been in that field for a long time. CURA is a place where there’s a really natural combination of these topics.
What is the process behind organizing the Conference on the Jewish Left?
You ever hear that analogy? You don’t want to see how the sausage is made? You don’t want to hear how the conference comes together either. There has been in the past 18 months, as a result of October 7, and especially because of Israel’s response to October 7, and the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza, a real upswing of activity by Jews and non Jews who support human rights, democracy, and equality. My job is to listen, and then give a platform to the people and the organizations making arguments.To try and shake the public sphere and bring people together so people can learn from each other, argue with each other, and debate. To do all the things that academics and students are supposed to do. To try and figure out what our values are, what our place in the world is, and how we can create policies that are consistent with that vision.
A lot of the speaker segments involve the Israel-Palestine conflict, will the conference focus on this conflict?
Again, my job is to listen, and because the most prominent voices are really galvanized by the genocide in Gaza, that is what not all, but a lot of, the conversations are going to focus on. I think in the future, we might focus on the climate. We might focus on democracy in the US, or in Britain, or Argentina, or in any other place in the world. I think identity issues, LGBTQ+ issues, I think sports. I think there’s a really wide range of issues that the conference could focus on, and I actually think it’s probably problematic to be totally focused on the Middle East. The conference, in some ways, is a container for the ideas, the mobilization, and the understanding of what’s happening in the world. So that’s why there seems to be the focus.
What is the overall objective of the conference? What do you hope to come out of the conference?
This is my job. I’m a professor of international relations in the Pardee School of Global Studies. The purpose of global studies is to train students to be literate in what’s happening in the world and to give them analytical tools to craft policies, advocate for policies, and implement policies in the world. Which I think is pretty consistent with the conference. I hope there will be a lot of debate. There’s a set of really interesting and important organizations that are coming up, and I want to give them a platform. That’s absolutely part of it. I want to give them a platform in part because there’s a lot of effort to silence them, to sort of treat the American Jewish community as hegemonic and uniformly pro-Israeli in policy. Minorities also really need to be protected in Muslim majority countries too. Sometimes there’s efforts by the majority to suppress the minority. So it’s the job of academics, in some ways, to say, hey, let’s listen to all the perspectives.
Why do you think people should attend?
Well, I think it’ll be fun. I mean, Simone Zimmerman is one of the most charismatic speakers I’ve ever heard. Same with Molly Crabapple. They’re young, they’re wicked smart, they’re really interesting. They have their finger on the pulse of what 18 to 25 year-olds are thinking about, and they’re advocating policy solutions. There’s a klezmer performance, Eastern European and Jewish folklore storytelling in the evening that involves a band where there can be some dancing and singing. So it’s a nice way to get in touch with a kind of tradition that has oftentimes been erased. Free lunch, free dinner. That’s not bad. And then, you know, the thing that people loved last year, that I totally didn’t expect, was they felt that they weren’t alone. I think a lot of progressive Jews feel alone in traditionally Jewish spaces where they feel like they can’t speak out for universal human rights, or in progressive spaces where they don’t want to out themselves as identifying with any particular religious tradition. And we’re gonna have 350 people in a room saying you’re not alone and you don’t have to be ashamed of your interests or your beliefs.
This article was produced for HorizonMass, the independent, student-driven, news outlet of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
