Deborah Lipstadt speaks at the wOSU building on Wednesday. Credit: Reegan Davis | Lantern Reporter
Deborah Lipstadt, an author and historian known for her work in Holocaust studies, spoke at the WOSU building on Wednesday in regards to Holocaust denial and antisemitism.
The event, which lasted for about an hour, was hosted by the “Listen. Learn. Discuss.” program in collaboration with the Office of Academic Affairs. Lipstadt gave an address at the beginning of the event, which was then followed by a fireside-styled discussion between her and Ohio State professor Winston C. Thompson.
Multiple Board of Trustees members, including President Ravi V. Bellamkonda and Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Trevor Brown, were also in attendance.
Lipstadt gave her keynote speech for approximately 40 minutes, opening with her defining antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is like a virus,” Lipstadt said. “And after COVID, we all have a very good sense of how viruses adapt to different environments. It is, in contemporary terms, a shape-shifter. It shifts shapes according to what is necessary, a vacuum at the moment.”
Lipstadt went further into detail to define hatred in relation to antisemitism.
“Well, I think first and foremost, it’s necessary to recognize that [hatred] is a prejudice,” Lipstadt said. “Like other prejudices, it operates in the same way. ‘A Jew does something right? Oh, that’s one of the good ones. A Jew does something bad? That’s how they all are.’ But there’s something distinctive about antisemitism as a prejudice, and that is a conspiracy theory.”
On Wednesday, an Ohio State student and staff member were arrested for protesting a pro-Israel event at the Ohio Union. They were a part of Students for Justice in Palestine and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, according to prior Lantern reporting.
Lipstadt also explained that after a pro-Palestinian protest in Gaza, a group of Jewish people were standing at the protest when police offers had asked them to leave.
“They said to them, ‘Your presence is a provocation,’” Lipstadt said. “That is not the answer of a democratic system.”
Lipstadt served as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism under President Joe Biden, serving as the role from 2022 to 2025. She also teaches Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, according to the university’s website.
Amanda Wurst, University Relations Director and a coordinator for Listen. Learn. Discuss., said that the program chooses their events based on community input.
“A lot of times it’s what we’re hearing from staff, students of faculty,” Wurst said. “We just try to be really flexible, adaptive and responsive.”
