Founding document

The Contemporary Antisemitism Studies Association (CASA) is being created to support, strengthen, and formalize the growing international field of contemporary antisemitism studies. CASA brings together scholars, research centers, academic programs, practitioners, students, and partner organizations committed to serious, evidence-based inquiry into antisemitism in its contemporary forms.

CASA is rooted in the belief that the study of antisemitism requires durable scholarly infrastructure: regular conferences, research networks, publication pathways, mentoring opportunities, methodological exchange, and spaces where scholars and practitioners can engage one another with seriousness, intellectual honesty, and mutual respect.

CASA is not designed to replace existing centers, journals, networks, or organizations. Rather, it seeks to connect and amplify them. Its purpose is to help build a shared academic and professional home for those working to understand historical and contemporary antisemitism and to ensure that this work is conducted with rigor, openness, and democratic scholarly norms.

CASA’s work will be guided by the following commitments:

Scholarly seriousness. CASA supports research grounded in evidence, argument, methodological care, and intellectual engagement.

Field-building. CASA will help develop the infrastructure needed for contemporary antisemitism studies to thrive as a recognized area of research, teaching, and public knowledge.

Intellectual pluralism. CASA welcomes diverse disciplinary, methodological, political, religious, and geographic perspectives, provided they are offered in a scholarly and respectful manner.

Democratic engagement. CASA seeks to foster a community in which scholars, students, practitioners, and institutional partners can contribute meaningfully to the development of the field.

Clear boundaries. CASA recognizes antisemitism, racism, sexism, and other forms of unjust discrimination as incompatible with the norms of scholarly community.

Recognition of antisemitism across ideological forms. CASA recognizes antisemitism as a real and serious phenomenon across political, religious, cultural, and ideological contexts. This includes right-wing, left-wing, Islamist, Christian, secular, conspiratorial, nationalist, and totalitarian forms of antisemitism, among others. CASA also recognizes antizionist antisemitism as real and significant, and it will be treated with the same scholarly seriousness as antisemitism motivated by any other position. CASA’s concern is not to police legitimate political debate, but to ensure that antisemitism is studied honestly wherever and however it appears.

Independence of research. CASA welcomes collaboration with advocacy, philanthropic, communal, educational, and policy organizations, while maintaining a clear distinction between scholarly inquiry and organizational advocacy.

CASA will be guided by a small executive leadership structure responsible for stewarding the association’s early development, maintaining coherence across its core initiatives, and ensuring that its work remains aligned with its scholarly mission.

This leadership structure will coordinate CASA’s major areas of activity, including conferences, the journal, research networks, membership, partnerships, communications, and long-term planning. It will also work with advisory bodies, institutional partners, and members to ensure that CASA grows in a way that is both academically rigorous and broadly participatory.

As CASA develops, it will create mechanisms for member input, advisory consultation, committee participation, and subject-specific working groups. These structures will allow members and partners to help shape the association’s intellectual agenda, programming, and field-building priorities.

The goal is to combine effective leadership with meaningful participation: CASA must be organized enough to build lasting infrastructure, while open enough to reflect the energy, insight, and diversity of the growing field.

CASA will support two distinct but complementary forms of general membership.

1. Scholarly Membership

Scholarly membership is intended for researchers working in academic, para-academic, or research-based settings. This includes faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, independent scholars, research professionals, and others actively engaged in the scholarly study of contemporary antisemitism.

Scholarly members may contribute to CASA through conference presentations, peer review, research networks, journal activity, mentoring, teaching, public scholarship, and methodological exchange.

This membership category recognizes that contemporary antisemitism studies is interdisciplinary by nature. Scholars may come from antisemitism studies, political science, sociology, psychology, history, law, education, Jewish studies, Holocaust and genocide studies, religious studies, communications, data science, philosophy, literary studies, and other fields.

2. Practitioner and Engaged Membership

Practitioner and engaged membership is intended for those who care deeply about contemporary antisemitism and are actively involved in, or seriously interested in, countering it, even if they have not necessarily produced scholarly research.

This may include educators, nonprofit professionals, communal leaders, civil-rights practitioners, policy professionals, museum and public-history professionals, journalists, legal advocates, campus professionals, educators, and others whose work intersects with antisemitism in public, institutional, or professional life.

Practitioner and engaged members will help ensure that CASA remains connected to the real-world contexts in which antisemitism is encountered, studied, taught, debated, and addressed. They may participate in conferences, public-facing sessions, educational programming, applied research discussions, and professional networks.

This membership category does not blur the distinction between research and advocacy. Rather, it recognizes that scholarship is strengthened when researchers understand the institutional and social contexts in which their work matters, and that practitioners benefit from access to rigorous, evidence-based research.

CASA will invite collaboration from individuals, institutions, and organizations in several distinct ways. These categories are designed to encourage broad participation while preserving CASA’s scholarly independence.

1. Founding Advisory Council

The Founding Advisory Council will include senior scholars and respected field leaders invited to provide intellectual guidance during CASA’s formative period. 

Members of the Founding Advisory Council will help advise on the association’s scholarly direction, conference themes, publication priorities, research networks, and long-term field-building strategy. Their role is consultative and intellectual rather than operational.

The Council will help ensure that CASA benefits from the experience of those who have shaped the study of antisemitism, Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, racism, political extremism, democratic decline, and related areas of inquiry.

2. Founding Association Members

Founding Association Members are individuals who join CASA during its inaugural period and help establish the association’s scholarly and communal foundation.

These members will form the first broad membership community of CASA. They will participate in conferences, sub-networks, mentoring opportunities, journal-related activities, and scholarly exchange. Their early participation will help demonstrate the breadth, seriousness, and international character of the field.

Founding Association Members will play an important role in shaping CASA’s culture: rigorous, collegial, intellectually open, and committed to strengthening contemporary antisemitism studies.

Further, Founding Association Members will receive an 18% discount on all paid CASA activities and programs, including conference registration, for as long as they keep their membership active.

3. Founding Academic Partners

Founding Academic Partners are universities, research centers, institutes, programs, labs, and other academic entities that wish to support CASA’s field-building mission.

Academic partners may contribute by co-sponsoring conferences, helping convene research networks, supporting graduate student participation, collaborating on research initiatives, developing academic programming, or participating in advisory conversations about the field’s future.

Academic partnership does not confer control over CASA’s scholarly agenda, journal decisions, conference acceptances, or research conclusions. Instead, it provides a structured way for institutions already invested in the study of antisemitism to help build shared infrastructure for the field.

4. Practitioner Partners

Practitioner Partners are organizations and institutions working in areas such as education, civil rights, communal life, policy, public history, campus affairs, media, law, and antisemitism response.

These partners help CASA remain attentive to the practical contexts in which contemporary antisemitism is encountered and addressed. They may participate in applied sessions, public programs, professional briefings, educational initiatives, and conversations about translating research into practice.

Practitioner partnership is not a mechanism for advocacy organizations to direct scholarship. CASA will maintain clear lines between research and advocacy. Practitioner partners may help identify urgent questions from the field, but CASA’s scholarly work will remain governed by evidence, peer review, academic standards, and intellectual independence.

5. Philanthropic and Institutional Supporters

Philanthropic and Institutional Supporters are individuals, foundations, federations, and other entities that provide financial support for CASA’s scholarly infrastructure.

Their support may help fund conferences, graduate student travel, early-career scholar mentoring, research workshops, journal development, publication access, administrative capacity, and public dissemination of research.

Financial support will not determine research findings, conference paper acceptance, journal publication decisions, or CASA’s scholarly positions. CASA will welcome philanthropic investment in the field while maintaining transparent boundaries that protect academic integrity and independence.

CASA recognizes that contemporary antisemitism is both a subject of scholarly inquiry and a matter of urgent public concern. This makes collaboration across sectors necessary, but it also makes clear boundaries essential.

CASA’s role is to support the production, discussion, publication, and dissemination of serious research. It does not exist to produce predetermined conclusions, serve as the research arm of any advocacy organization, or collapse scholarship into political messaging.

At the same time, CASA rejects the idea that academic work must be isolated from public life. Research on antisemitism should inform educators, policymakers, institutions, Jewish communities, civil-rights professionals, and democratic societies more broadly. CASA will therefore create structured opportunities for exchange between scholars and practitioners while preserving the independence of scholarly methods and conclusions.

In practice, this means:

CASA’s work will develop through several core activities:

Annual conferences. CASA will support a rotating international conference that brings together scholars, graduate students, practitioners, and institutional partners.

Subject-specific networks. CASA will develop sub-networks focused on major areas of research, such as methodology, campus antisemitism, antisemitism and law, education, technology, theology, political extremism, antizionism, and global patterns of contemporary antisemitism.

Scholarly journal. CASA will be connected to the development of a dedicated scholarly journal in contemporary antisemitism studies, providing a rigorous publication venue for emerging and established work.

Research hub. CASA will support efforts to connect scholars with research opportunities, funding pathways, collaborative projects, datasets, and methodological resources.

Mentorship and professional development. CASA will create opportunities for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, early-career scholars, and emerging practitioners to receive mentoring and build professional networks.

Public dissemination. CASA will help communicate research findings to audiences who can use them responsibly, including educators, policymakers, communal professionals, university leaders, journalists, and civil-society institutions.

CASA begins from a simple premise: contemporary antisemitism is too significant, too complex, and too consequential to be studied in isolation. The field requires a scholarly home where researchers can exchange ideas, test arguments, build collaborations, mentor the next generation, and engage the institutions that need serious knowledge.

CASA will provide that home.

It will bring together scholars and practitioners without confusing their roles. It will welcome support while protecting independence. It will build infrastructure without displacing existing institutions. It will create a democratic intellectual community grounded in evidence, rigor, collegiality, and a shared commitment to understanding contemporary antisemitism in all of its forms.

At its best, CASA will help move the field from emergence to maturity: from scattered expertise to coordinated scholarship, from episodic convenings to durable infrastructure, and from concern about antisemitism to deeper understanding, better research, and more informed action.