In a college guide for the perplexed, the title of our feature essay this month at Mosaic,

our focus is on higher ed reform, the future and fate of the humanities, and helping parents

of Jewish students figure out the best places to pursue university

studies. This is not the first time that Mosaic has dealt with these and related issues.

In May 24, my mosaic colleague, Dr. Andrew Koss, wrote a searching provocative essay,

in which he looked specifically at the field of Jewish studies. In the spring of that year, when

campuses had exploded in pro-Hamas anti-Jewish activism, how did professors of Jewish studies react?

How should they have reacted? Andrew probes the history and sociology of this academic discipline

in his blockbuster essay, Jewish Studies, Against the Jews.

Well, later in the month, we invited on one of the eminent figures in the field of Jewish studies,

the UCLA historian David Myers. Professor Myers, as I note in my welcoming remarks to that conversation,

is prominent, not only in his scholarship, but also in his very public

commentary on questions of Israeli public policy, defense policy, American public policy.

He's prominent in ways that are very different than the general orientation that we have at

Mosaic and the sorts of guests I normally have on this program. I was grateful that he came on,

despite those differences,

and at the end of our interaction, some of the core tensions and disagreements between Andrew

and David came to the surface. Welcome to the Tikfoot podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

This week, we are broadcasting a conversation I hosted exclusively for Mosaic subscribers back in 2024 about

whether and why Jewish studies as a field has turned against the Jews on campus.

If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,

Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of

...