Prof. Sander L. Gilman: Why the Jews are the smartest people in the universe and why this is a bad thing

European Leo Baeck Lecture Series London 2011

24 May 2011, 7pm at the German Historical Institute

Claims about Jewish intellectual superiority surface regularly even in the 21st century. Modern genetics, it is claimed, prove that being smart is a singular component of “being Jewish”. Can it be a bad thing to be thought to be smart? The claim reveals itself to be a form of insidious philosemitism, a form of antisemitism, which has traditionally masked itself as being supportive of the Jews. Often it is your supposed friends that you have to worry about most.

Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. He is the author or editor of over eighty books. Obesity: The Biography appeared with Oxford University Press (2010); his most recent edited volume is Wagner and Cinema (with Jeongwon Joe, 2010). He is the author of the basic study of the visual stereotyping of the mentally ill, Seeing the Insane (1982), as well as Jewish Self-Hatred (1986). For 25 years he was a member of the humanities and medical faculties at Cornell University where he held the Goldwin Smith Professorship of Humane Studies.