On May 9th, 2019, The Humanities Institute and Center for Jewish History event, Anti-Semitism and the Internet, drew over 100 people to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. At the event, Nathaniel Deutsch and Rachel Deblinger, co-directors of the Digital Jewish Studies Initiative at UC Santa Cruz, traced how older forms of antisemitism have been reimagined in the internet age. The event explored the role of internet technologies to facilitate the rapid spread of bigotry and hatred and considered how scholars of antisemitism can work closely with members of the tech community to fight against this and related forms of hatred toward others.
This is an urgently needed conversation and one that continues around the Bay Area and beyond. Two recent articles in The Jewish News of California and KQED News quote Deutsch and Deblinger to help extend their own conversations.
Event photos by Paul Schraub:
