Why Can Academics Study ‘Islamophobia’ But Not Anti-Semitism?

by Phyllis Chesler and Nathan Bloom:

Recently, Yale shut down its Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA). Some claimed that the center was perhaps too “political.”

Almost simultaneously, on June 23, 2011, the University of California at Berkeley’s Center on Race and Gender issued its first annual “Islamophobia” report. The report is a project of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP), whose mission statement says: “The IRDP focuses on a systematic and empirical approach to the study of Islamophobia and its impact on the American Muslim community. Today, Muslims in the U.S., parts of Europe, and around the world have been transformed into a demonized and feared global ‘other,’ subjected to legal, social, and political discrimination.”

In our view, “Islamophobia” hardly deserves any academic attention compared to the much more serious phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

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