My Autumn 2026 course on the Russian and Soviet Jewish Experience at the University of Washington kicks off tomorrow. Check it out.
Sasha Senderovich 🌻
@returnstosender.bsky.social
7.5K followers 6.6K following 1.3K posts
𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘑𝘦𝘸 𝘞𝘢𝘴 𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘦 (Harvard, 2022) bit.ly/SovietJewBook | 𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘵 (Stanford, 2026) www.sup.org/books/jewish-studies/sh… | he/him | Opinions my own | My website: sashasenderovich.weebly.com
![ICYMI. Also, I went back to the video to check my notes. Ruth Wisse's second message "from 'the blue and white' in 'the red, white, and blue'" is terribly sinister and downright authoritarian: she presents the Shema (the prayer) as the central scene of instruction of sorts, which, taken as a message to the American values she wants to see perpetuated, presents the following as the scene of instruction at American universities, which, she says, "had given up on transmitting the joys the blessings of the teachings of citizenship." "My second message arriving from millennia of [Jewish] textual transmission," Wisse says, "is that if there is to be a government of, by, and for the people, the people would have to be instructed and reminded to respect and confidently to perpetuate their precious inheritance." From her reading of Jewish values to her fascist view of higher education as needing to instill "gratitude" (another word she used in proximity to all this) in the citizenry -- that's Ruth Wisse the ideologue in a nutshell.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zss2u674nnqqrkhrxvh6f42h/bafkreidfkzxmiynfp2pmaqfjdal4phxhefvdvmgdfatyyr6tl5a6omfqwa)
![35 or so minutes in: we come to Israel and what it has to teach Americans. [...] This is a long-winded bit with a lot of popularized version of Zionist mythology but the main issue she works toward is this: America needs to learn from Israel how to fight, including -- she is heavily implying though not quite saying it directly -- now in Iran (this section ends around 50 minutes in).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zss2u674nnqqrkhrxvh6f42h/bafkreihuezhv3g2rw4hvs7ttwtzqhovg65et3jayrexxxk7vsvvyzn4zau)
![On March 10, UW hosted a lecture on “Fighting Antisemitism Around the Globe" by Deborah Lipstadt on campus at the request of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. The university’s decision to serve as the stage for this event is troubling.
Since finishing her term as U.S. Department of State Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism in the administration of Joe Biden, Lipstadt has publicly supported the deportation of student protesters under policies advanced by Donald Trump. A university—an institution dedicated to educating students in an environment appropriate to learning—should not have lent its name and facilities to a figure who has endorsed removing students from the U.S. for political protest. This concern has little to do with disagreements over how to understand or combat antisemitism, including the relationship between this question and the conduct of the U.S.-assisted Israeli assault on Gaza in the aftermath of October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that have ignited student protests in the first place. Rather, it concerns the responsibilities of a public university to its own students.
The event appeared to be organized primarily for an outside audience. By accounts from attendees, fewer than ten students identified themselves (in a room of approximately 200 people) when invited to do so. The absence of campus advertising—no posters, no university website listing—suggests the event was not meant to engage the student body at all.
Yet the talk was held at the HUB [UW's Student Union building], with the participation of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. If the university believed this event served its educational mission and the invitation of a speaker supportive of deporting students was justified, it should have openly invited students and faculty to attend and debate the issues at hand. If not, it should have declined to host it.
Sasha Senderovich
Associate Professor of International, Slavic, and Jewish Studies](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zss2u674nnqqrkhrxvh6f42h/bafkreicq6j2626tc64khsne5ttjsaq5qjeg26lgnn35qkedusii43y66eq)
![While the DEI justification has generated headlines, Senderovich said, “I think it’s also somewhat misleading to get hung up on what they typed into ChatGPT.”
The NEH’s final grant cancellation list, he noted, included many projects that had not been flagged as DEI. One such cancellation noted by the plaintiffs’ attorneys — which DOGE canceled over McDonald’s objections — was “a grant to advance the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill [sic] University.” Such actions, Senderovich says, show that the agency’s goal was “to destroy the existing projects that supported public humanities, and to wipe the slate clean for a revamped NEH more in line with the MAGA agenda.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zss2u674nnqqrkhrxvh6f42h/bafkreihm455phb7tkdb4uzih7x52yq4lyvdy77mjy2eypmjtofdxmvfigq)
!["As another example, ChatGPT answered “Yes” for a grant awarded to fund a project called “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union,” which strove to provide “a critical, annotated translation into English of Yiddish and Russian works written in the aftermath of the most significant Jewish tragedy of the 20th century.” ChatGPT classified this grant as DEI because “[t]his anthology explores Jewish writers’ engagement with the Holocaust in the USSR [...].” Id. at I315"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zss2u674nnqqrkhrxvh6f42h/bafkreiae4dmv3rh4ttjz45l6dxuwrx35n62vpfmqxw5ikwmscizyjqoafu)
