G\u00fcnther Jikeli, a scholar of antisemitism and associate director of IU\u2019s Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, stepped into the role.<\/p>\n
Soon after taking over, Jikeli clashed with graduate student Sabina Ali, who identifies as Jewish and supports the Palestinian cause. He expelled her from a Zoom seminar for displaying a \u201cFree Palestine\u201d image and later denied her travel funding to present a paper critical of \u201cJewish indigeneity\u201d claims related to Israel. Jikeli said her work was \u201cpolitical activism, not scholarship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the Borns Jewish Studies faculty and graduate students have publicly sided against Jikeli, fearing that his actions will threaten academic freedom and damage the reputation of one of the oldest and most storied Jewish studies programs in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to have a Jewish studies program where we knew we had political differences, but we had really great academic working relationships,\u201d said Sarah Imhoff, a tenured professor who has been at IU for 16 years. \u201cAnd that has significantly deteriorated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the same time, dozens of faculty at universities around the world, most of them in Jewish studies, have signed a letter to the dean supporting Jikeli. They wrote that he was \u201cfacing an entirely unwarranted political assault on his professional integrity and judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Professor Jikeli is trying to do is restore rigor and objectivity in the department,\u201d Allon Friedman, a medical school professor on IU\u2019s Indianapolis campus and leader of multiple pro-Israel advocacy groups in the state, told JTA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friedman continued, \u201cWe\u2019ve seen over the last few decades a real deterioration \u2014 not only the quality of scholarship in Jewish Studies in particular, but also an injection of politics that is oftentimes anti-Israel, if not overtly antisemitic. That\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Mark Roseman, former director of Indiana University\u2019s Jewish Studies program, in a promotional video for the program, Oct. 28, 2015. (Screenshot via YouTube)<\/p>\n
Jikeli, who is not Jewish, declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for this story. Representatives for IU and the dean\u2019s office did not return repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Jikeli\u2019s appointment in August came as a surprise to Roseman, who directed Jewish Studies at IU from 2013 to 2020 before reassuming the position last year. Roseman, who unlike Jikeli is Jewish, told JTA he stepped down after Jikeli told him that Reingold, who was named chancellor in June, had privately offered the director role to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This was considered a highly unusual arrangement for an academic program, where directors are not typically forced out before the end of their term and any replacements would typically be vetted by committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised by it, obviously. It didn\u2019t make sense to me to continue not having the confidence of the campus leadership,\u201d Roseman said. He added that, in his eyes, \u201cthe program operated very harmoniously.\u201d He remains affiliated with the program as a tenured faculty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jikeli told the Indiana Daily Student that he, too, was given no reason for the leadership change. Seemingly no one in the program was. At a meeting with Rick Van Kooten, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Jewish studies faculty asked why their director was being replaced now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you that,\u201d the dean responded, according to multiple accounts of the meeting.<\/p>\n
This scene was part of a broader cultural shift at IU, where around 12% of the student body is Jewish<\/a> \u2014 and where new personnel and new oversight have been installed at various levels in a broader effort to comply with the nationwide campus crackdown led by President Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indiana\u2019s Republican state legislature, following Trump\u2019s model, has wrested control of public university governance<\/a> and pressured IU to curb the power of faculty decision-making, leading to a broader revolt over free speech on campus<\/a>. During last year\u2019s pro-Palestinian encampments, state police dispatched snipers to campus rooftops as a peacekeeping measure in a much-criticized move.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the encampments, IU, like other schools, convened an antisemitism advisory board<\/a>. Roseman and Jikeli served on it together, along with Dean Van Kooten and others including an Indianapolis congregational rabbi. (Unlike similar antisemitism task forces at other schools, IU\u2019s has not produced a formal report.)<\/p>\n One Jewish professor who had played a leading role in the encampments was disciplined over the summer after being found in violation of an \u201cintellectual diversity\u201d law recently passed by the state senate<\/a>. That professor, Benjamin Robinson, has since been sanctioned by the school. The complaint said that by sharing his views on Israel and Gaza in one of his Germanic studies classes, he violated a state law that forbids faculty from discussing their views in the classroom if they are unrelated to the professor\u2019s expertise.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many saw the recent shutdown of the student newspaper<\/a> as a further attempt to quash dissent. (IU walked back its decision last week<\/a>, but not before having fired the student media director.)\u00a0<\/p>\n At the same time, not all speech has been silenced on campus. Recently Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, spoke to 3,000 IU students\u00a0 as part of the Turning Point USA tour<\/a> days before releasing a chummy interview with avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Roseman alluded to such pressures in the Jewish studies program\u2019s most recent alumni newsletter<\/a>, dated fall 2025. In a \u201cdirector\u2019s report\u201d written before he stepped down, he warns of recent actions from the state legislature forcing public universities to close programs that enroll under a certain threshold of majors<\/a>. Such actions, he told alums, could jeopardize the program\u2019s future.\u00a0<\/p>\n The same newsletter included an \u201ceditor\u2019s note\u201d stating that Roseman would no longer be serving as director \u2014 and a welcome note from Jikeli. His primary concerns were different.<\/p>\n G\u00fcnther Jikeli, a professor of antisemitism, addresses an audience in Cleveland, Ohio, Dec. 7, 2018. In 2025 Jikeli was installed as interim director of Indiana University\u2019s Jewish Studies program over the wishes of some of his colleagues. (Screenshot via YouTube)<\/p>\n \u201cRising antisemitism is a challenge on campuses across the country,\u201d Jikeli wrote. \u201cWhile IU is not immune, we are fortunate to have strong partnerships and resources to address these concerns, and we will continue to work together to ensure that Jewish Studies remains a place of learning, resilience, and community.\u201d<\/p>\n Roseman, a renowned British scholar of the Holocaust who most recently edited a comprehensive four-volume Cambridge history of the Shoah, had tried to keep a low profile on campus in the two years since the Hamas attacks and outbreak of war in Gaza. Even as IU, like many other schools, contended with encampments and accusations that Israel was committing genocide, the resident genocide scholar sought to keep his own views out of the spotlight, colleagues said.<\/p>\n That has not been the case with Jikeli, whose research specialties include monitoring antisemitism among pro-Palestinian supporters on Instagram and in European Muslim communities, including Syrian refugees. Last year he helped to organize a \u201cRally Against Hamas Propaganda\u201d on campus<\/a>, alongside the leaders of IU\u2019s Hillel and Chabad centers and the president of Hoosiers for Israel. At the time, Jikeli told the Indiana Daily Student that the rally was not intended as a direct counter to the encampments.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking to the Combat Antisemitism Movement, an activist group, over the summer prior to his appointment as director, Jikeli warned that tensions on campuses like his own<\/a> were \u201centering a more dangerous phase.\u201d He painted anti-Zionist activists in stark terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not just dealing with protests,\u201d he said then. \u201cWe\u2019re facing a hardened core of ideologically driven actors, empowered by digital amplification and real-world networks, who are reshaping campus discourse \u2014 and possibly campus safety \u2014 in deeply troubling ways.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the two months since Jikeli took over the Jewish studies director post, he has taken a harder line against a strain of pro-Palestinian activism that had been running through some aspects of the program. In his view, expressed in emails viewed by JTA, he is protecting the program from influence or activism that could harm its mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indiana University graduate student Sabina Ali holds a sign with her name on it as members of the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition and its supporters picket while striking for union recognition in Bloomington, Indiana, April 25, 2022. (Jeremy Hogan\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images)<\/p>\n His efforts soon focused on a chief adversary: Sabina Ali, a sixth-year doctoral student pursuing a Ph.D. in religious studies with a minor in Jewish studies and a former managing editor of the American Religion Journal, a scholarly publication based at IU.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over email, Ali told JTA she identifies as \u201cpost-Soviet Jewish,\u201d with a mixed family including Muslims. \u201cMy Jewish identity is inseparable from the struggle against all forms of oppression, including Israel\u2019s ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide against Palestinians,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Last year Ali was one of dozens to sign an open letter from \u201cJewish Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni\u201d<\/a> protesting the university\u2019s breaking up of a student encampment<\/a> \u2014 a letter not signed by Roseman, Imhoff or any other current Jewish studies faculty save one. (An emeritus professor who is on the Jewish studies faculty advisory board also signed.) She supports a movement pressuring IU to divest from Israel, and her Zoom profile picture, visible when her camera is off, is a drawing of a woman wearing a keffiyeh accompanied by a Palestinian flag and the words \u201cFree Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n Ali was drawn to Jewish studies, she said, \u201cbecause my research engages core questions within the field while also expanding the field\u2019s boundaries through critical approaches.\u201d She also admired the work of the faculty, particularly Imhoff. \u201cIt matters deeply to me to be part of Jewish Studies because it is a field where I feel I can make meaningful contributions and connect it to broader interdisciplinary conversations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n When on campus she routinely wore a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by protesters on the left<\/a>, to Jewish studies events \u2014 something she said she did without incident before Jikeli\u2019s appointment.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI am fully aware that not everyone in the program shares my political views or my fundamental moral conviction that occupation, apartheid, and genocide are unacceptable,\u201d Ali told JTA. \u201cAcademic freedom does not require that everyone is comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the leadership change, Ali\u2019s politics encountered little pushback within Jewish studies \u2014 although some faculty and students had expressed discomfort behind closed doors. But under Jikeli, it quickly became an issue.<\/p>\n Her Zoom picture became a sticking point in September when it was visible during a program event, as Imhoff prepared to present her own latest research to colleagues. According to those in attendance at the Zoom lecture, Jikeli ordered Ali to remove the pro-Palestinian image or he\u2019d kick her off the call. When she refused, he booted her \u2014 prompting a mass exodus from nearly all of her colleagues, who reconvened in a separate Zoom meeting, sans Jikeli, to discuss the research.\u00a0<\/p>\n The incident infuriated many on campus who viewed Jikeli\u2019s actions as a violation of academic freedom, with one professor calling his behavior \u201cautocratic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In an email obtained by JTA, Ali wrote, \u201cThe irony is not lost on me that I \u2014 a Jewish student \u2014 was excluded from a Jewish Studies event for expressing solidarity with Palestinians, while you, a \u2018scholar\u2019 of antisemitism, used your authority to decide what kinds of Jewish expression are acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Some, however, supported Jikeli.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not think it was wrong of Dr. Jikeli to ask, or to insist, that a Zoom profile with said imagery and said language be removed, given the program that we\u2019re in, given the times that we\u2019re in,\u201d Joanna Martin, a second-year doctoral student with a Jewish studies minor, told JTA.\u00a0<\/p>\n Things shortly escalated when Jikeli vetoed Ali\u2019s request for funding to present her research paper, \u201cWeaponizing Indigeneity,\u201d at a conference on religious studies. According to the paper\u2019s abstract, \u201cclaims about \u2018Jewish indigeneity\u2019 to Palestine\u2026are appropriated to justify the existence and actions of the settler-colonial nation-state of Israel and deployed to legitimize the possession of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n The funding request, typically pro forma, had already been approved by the faculty committee overseeing graduate studies. The program director\u2019s decision to unilaterally override the committee was, observers said, unprecedented.\u00a0<\/p>\n No one before Jikeli had raised a flag about her research proposal. \u201cIn fact,\u201d Ali said, \u201cmy advisors and committee members have told me that my research is innovative for Jewish studies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Jikeli defended his decision to faculty in a September email, obtained by JTA, saying Ali\u2019s research was too politicized. He suggested that the Department of Religious Studies, Ali\u2019s primary doctoral home, could fund her travel instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jikeli explained in a follow-up email that he had to act \u201cin the best interest of Jewish Studies as a program,\u201d and believed that funding Ali \u201ccould have harmed Jewish Studies.\u201d He added, \u201cI understand that reasonable people may disagree on where exactly to draw such lines.\u201d<\/p>\n Many in the program weren\u2019t persuaded.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of us feel like this current arrangement is not one we would want to continue,\u201d Imhoff said. \u201cI would like to find a way forward where we can support all graduate students and faculty who are doing serious research, regardless of their politics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a graduate student. We\u2019re all graduate students. Part of our job here is to learn how to fit within this discipline, fit within the field, and push boundaries of what that\u2019s supposed to look like,\u201d Daniel Reischer, a third-year doctoral student, told JTA.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ali\u2019s activism, long tolerated in the program, was now a flashpoint. \u201cMy sense is this is just what he was hired to do, to deny Sabina funding,\u201d one member of the Jewish Studies faculty said of Jikeli. Some have argued it is, in fact, Jikeli who is imposing personal politics on Ali\u2019s research.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are paranoid,\u201d Claire Richters, a sixth-year Ph.D. student, told JTA. She was one of three members of the Jewish Studies graduate student executive committee, including Reischer, who signed an open letter to Jikeli protesting his decision to withhold funding to Ali.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s just a worry that this will start extending to any issue that the director has a political disagreement with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Those concerns aren\u2019t shared by everyone. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of, like, \u2018Will my research be denied?\u2019 And it\u2019s like, you\u2019re doing Holocaust studies. I doubt it,\u201d Martin said. Declining to share her thoughts on Ali\u2019s research and its appropriateness for Jewish Studies, she added, \u201cThe majority don\u2019t have reason to be worried.\u201d<\/p>\n The letter from outside faculty supporting Jikeli also defends the actions he took against Ali.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, there was good reason, we believe, to turn down a request for travel support to deliver a programmatic indictment of Israel as a colonialist power. Nothing in the abstract demonstrates any original arguments,\u201d the letter states. \u201cSecond, the decision to disallow a student in an online seminar to replace her face with a political slogan and an anonymized portrait in a keffiyeh was responsible and appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the letter\u2019s signatories: Alvin Rosenfeld, who founded Jewish studies at IU.<\/p>\n A police officer with a gun stands on a Palestinian flag during the arrest of an activist on the third day of a pro-Palestinian protest camp at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, April 27, 2024. (Jeremy Hogan\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Dean Van Kooten weighed in on the disputes with Ali in an internal email on Oct. 29.<\/p>\n He tried to walk a fine line. \u201cI concur with the director\u2019s decision to not use Borns Jewish Studies Program funding, particularly an IU foundation account[,] to fund the travel of the graduate student,\u201d Van Kooten wrote in an email viewed by JTA. However, he added, Ali\u2019s travel to the conference would still be funded, just from a different IU piggy bank. This would be done, he wrote, in the name of \u201crespecting academic freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n When it came to Zoomgate, Van Kooten was more circumspect. \u201cRegarding the governance of the use of Zoom in department\/program seminars, colloquia, etc., the college does not have a policy on this, and we don\u2019t recommend one,\u201d he wrote. Any Zoom policy going forward, he added, \u201cshould be voted on by the entire core faculty, and in consultation with Indiana University\u2019s general counsel.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The dean added that, in absence of any clear policy, \u201cthe convenor of an event must exercise sound judgment in balancing the importance of freedom of speech and expression [following university policies] with the obligation to maintain an inclusive learning environment, and limit disruptions when they occur.\u201d<\/p>\n One graduate student told JTA the email felt like a \u201cstalemate.\u201d The work of the program goes on: This week its contemporary antisemitism center hosted a symposium on campus antisemitism, with many of its featured speakers having also signed the letter supporting Jikeli.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unusually, the conference was supported with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Under Trump the NEH has defunded virtually every other Jewish humanities program, with the exception of the conservative Tikvah Fund<\/a>. The current acting chair of the NEH was expected to attend IU\u2019s conference.<\/p>\n For some broader observers of the Jewish studies space, who\u2019d long seen Indiana as a beacon for the field, the situation is deeply troubling.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIndiana is more than a red state. It has an incredible history of white supremacy,\u201d said Riv-Ellen Prell, an emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota who has studied the history of Jews on campus. \u201cAnd here is IU, in the middle of this world, as this incredible magnet for Jewish students \u2014 because the Jewish studies program was so great, because they had a big Hillel.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But with the forced changes, Prell said, the forces that shape higher education were sending a message: \u201c\u2018We like these kinds of Jewish studies people. We don\u2019t like those kinds of Jewish studies people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Prell said that concerns about the appropriateness of Ali\u2019s graduate studies were missing the point: that there were other ways the program\u2019s director could have addressed them.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is where she is housed as a student, admitted as a student, and there is academic freedom, and there are faculty who wish to supervise and work with her,\u201d Prell said. \u201cIf we are to begin saying, \u2018Well, the faculty who work with these students aren\u2019t allowed to teach or supervise people with this kind of work,\u2019 then that is the death of academic freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Friedman sees things differently.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s insane that we would even consider to pay for something like this,\u201d he said, of Ali\u2019s research. \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of a Jewish studies department if the students in the department are demonstrating that, not only do they know nothing about the history of the Jewish people, but they\u2019re actively trying to undermine it? No one else would tolerate this.\u201d<\/p>\n Jewish studies has increasingly been a growing lightning rod for Jewish campus politics<\/a>, even before Hamas\u2019s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and Israel\u2019s assault in Gaza; the spike in campus antisemitism, and Trump\u2019s college crackdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n At other schools, donors have pulled funding for Jewish and Israel studies programs<\/a> over political disagreements with faculty on Israel. Some Jewish studies faculty have been targeted or muscled out of campus antisemitism task forces<\/a> because of their perceived views on Israel, while others have led protests against their own task forces<\/a>. At Columbia, which reached a settlement with the Trump administration to protect its funding after becoming the epicenter of student protests, some angry Jewish donors have opted to support Jewish Studies, but not the rest of the university<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet Jikeli\u2019s fear that the IU controversy \u201ccould harm Jewish Studies\u201d seems to some a self-fulfilling prophecy. On social media, current and former IU Jewish Studies faculty were bemoaning the spiritual end of the program. And citing the interim director\u2019s actions, some prospective graduate students have told faculty they are no longer interested in enrolling.<\/p>\n Power the news that matters to you. Before 2025 ends, help JTA’s independent, award-winning newsroom document Jewish history in real-time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tKeep Jewish Stories in Focus.\t\t<\/p>\n JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sudden change in leadership at Indiana University\u2019s Jewish studies program has erupted into a bitter internal feud,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,147388,59354,147389,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-277601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-campus-antisemitism","tag-indiana-university","tag-jewish-studies","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/10-31-25-indianau-2.jpg\")
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