Feeling (Un)safe: Jews, Muslims and the German State Since October 7

Activity Type: 
Lecture
Promo Image: 
Presenter: 
Dick Moses, City College of New York
Date: 
Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 16:00 to 17:15
Event Status: 
As Scheduled
Location: 
Wesley W. Posvar, Room 4130
Contact Person: 
Erica Edwards
Contact Email: 
eee36@pitt.edu
Cost: 
free

As part of the Unmasking Prejudice: Confronting Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Racism Across Europe
Spring Lecture Series:

For about 25 years, a minority security dilemma has been crystalizing in Germany. With increasing Muslim immigration, the state has gradually instituted measures to acculturate this small but growing minority to the official memory culture centered on the Holocaust. It does so in part out a concern with Jewish safety, which is increasingly centered on sensitivities about German support of Israel rather than antisemitic crimes, nearly all of which are committed by Christian Germans. To make Jewish people feel safer, Muslim migrants are made to feel less safe. Conversely, Muslim security is experienced as endangering Jews. Therein lies the dilemma. This development hardened dramatically after October 7. How and why the trilateral relationship between the German state and its two non-Christian minorities issued in a dilemma
rather than reconciliation is the subject of this paper.

About the Speaker:
A. Dirk Moses is the Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the City College of New York. He is author and editor of publications on German history and in Genocide Studies, including Nachdem Genozid: Grundlage für eine neue Erinnerungskultur (2023). His public writings on Germany, Gaza, and Ukraine have appeared in the Geschichte der Gegenwart, the Boston Review, Noema Magazine and Lawfare. He edits the Journal of Genocide Research.

UCIS Unit: 
European Studies Center
European Union Center of Excellence
UCIS Engagement
Other Pitt Sponsors: 
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Department of French and Italian Department of History Department of German Department of Religious Studies Jewish Studies Program
Non-University Sponsors: 
Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic
Carnegie Mellon University
Is Event Already in University Calendar?: 
Yes
Pitt Undergrads: 
25
Pitt Grad Students: 
1