Kutler Lectures

media release: The Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies presents The 2025 Stanley I. Kutler Lectures in American Jewish History

William I. Brustein

West Virginia University

November 12 & 13, 2025

4:00pm

Memorial Union, Old Madison Room 

800 Langdon Street (Madison, WI)

These lectures will also be livestreamed via Zoom. Click here to register and receive the Zoom link.

“Why Do You Think They Call It the Oldest Hatred?

Antisemitism—Past & Present”

Wednesday, November 12

4:00pm

Drawing on more than 40 years of empirical research on antisemitism in Europe and the U.S., Professor William I. Brustein offers key insights into the ubiquity of antisemitism. Among the questions to be addressed in his presentation are Why were so many people indifferent to the fate of the Jews on the eve of the Holocaust? Why did antisemitism reach such heights before the Holocaust? How do we explain societal and temporal variation in antisemitism? How does antisemitism differ from other forms of ethnic, racial and religious prejudice? Is leftist antisemitism new? and how does present-day antisemitism differ from past antisemitism?

“Phantom Enemies

Antisemitism in the American Heartland on the Eve of the Holocaust”

Thursday, November 13

4:00pm

In studies of prejudice much has been published on intolerance toward minorities when the majority and minority population have direct contact. According to this line of thinking, ethnic groups in proximity to one another may see themselves competing for scarce resources resulting in perceived suspicion or hostility rather than in tolerance to each other. However, there is scant literature examining racial, ethnic or religious discrimination when the majority and minority have little or no history of engagement. In 1938, as World War II loomed on the horizon and as the heartland of America suffered from the devastating effects of the Great Depression, the Republican voters of five rural Kansas counties voted overwhelmingly to send to the U.S. Senate Gerald B. Winrod, a man whose opponents dubbed the “Jayhawk Nazi.” Alone among the five candidates vying for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from Kansas, Winrod held the distinction of being a longtime anti-Semitic propagandist whose goal had been to expose the “hidden hand” of the Jews in everything wrong with the world. Winrod garnered roughly 48 percent of votes from Republican voters in Clay County while amassing only 11.48 percent in Russell County—a mere 100 miles separating the two largely rural counties. What was it that led Clay County voters to favor Winrod while voters in nearby Russell County barely gave him any consideration? How significant was Winrod’s anti-Semitism in the decision of Clay County voters who selected him over three other candidates?

William I. Brustein is Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University, having recently stepped down as Vice President for Global Strategies and International Affairs and Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of History. Dr. Brustein is widely published in the areas of political extremism and ethnic/religious/racial prejudice. His notable books include Anti-Semitism without in Jews, Germany, France, and the U.S.: Phantom Enemies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), The Socialism of Fools? Leftist Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust (Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Logic of Evil: the Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925 to 1933 (Yale University Press, 1996), The Social Origins of Political Regionalism: France, 1848-1981 (University of California Press, 1988), and a forthcoming edited volume: A Companion to Global Antisemitism.