Don't Know Much About with Naya Lekht

Naya Lekht
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Don't Know Much About is a podcast hosted by Dr. Naya Lekht, a scholar and educator with a PhD from UCLA in Russian Literature. Each episode unpacks a contentious topic — from antizionism and Soviet history to Jewish identity and contemporary geopolitics — through rigorous research, personal stories, and candid conversations with leading thinkers. Clarifying the complex, one conversation at a time.

  1. 6 DAYS AGO

    "Zionophobia, AI, and A Life of Inquiry" with Judea Pearl

    Dr. Judea Pearl is a Turing Award-winning computer scientist, UCLA professor, and father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. He joins Naya for a sweeping conversation that moves from his 1936 childhood in B'nei Brak to the word he coined to fight back against the moral inversion on today's college campuses. Pearl was raised to be what early Zionists called "the New Jew", a child born free in the land of Israel, shielded from the weight of diaspora persecution. He remembers playing with Arab children from the neighboring village, screaming slogans against the British White Paper on the school bus, dancing in the streets the night the UN partition vote passed, and a moment of reckoning with his father when he realized, at eleven years old, that he had grown up without ever understanding what antisemitism actually meant. Decades later, as a professor at UCLA, he watched that same word, Zionism, become contaminated on the very campuses that had been built, in part, by the sacrifices of his generation. So he coined a new one: "Zionophobia". In this conversation, he explains why the old vocabulary failed, why administrators kept reaching for "antisemitism" as a way to avoid dealing with the real problem, and why he believes the only effective response is to put antizionists in the accusatory chair. The conversation closes with something unexpected: a reflection from one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence on whether AI will take us over ("Yes, we will be taken over"), and why the very traits that make AI useful, curiosity and autonomy, are the traits that make it dangerous. This episode is a rare portrait of a man who has spent his life in the pursuit of inquiry, across computer science, Jewish identity, and what it means to be a free people in our own land. Guest Bio **Dr. Judea Pearl** is Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Cognitive Systems Laboratory. He is internationally recognized for his foundational contributions to artificial intelligence, human reasoning, and the philosophy of science. He is the recipient of the **Turing Award** — widely regarded as the Nobel Prize of Computing — for work that transformed how machines handle probability and causal inference. He is also the father of **Daniel Pearl**, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. In Daniel's memory, he and his wife Ruth co-founded the **Daniel Pearl Foundation**, which works to promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and dialogue. Pearl has written and lectured prolifically on Jewish identity, Zionism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and campus antisemitism. Forty-five of his essays on these subjects are collected in his recent book, ***Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2023***. Resources & Further Reading - **Book:** *Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl* — available on Amazon - **The Daniel Pearl Foundation** — danielpearl.org - **Pearl's original essay on Zionophobia** — Ha'Am (UCLA's Jewish Newsmagazine) - **Martha Pollack's 2019 BDS statement** — Cornell University (March 1, 2019) - **Azzam Pasha's 1947 interview** — *Akhbar al-Yom*, October 11, 1947 (the "war of extermination" quote referenced in the episode) Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    55 min

  2. 15 APR

    "Canada's Polite Pogrom" with Jesse Brown

    What happened to Canada? Once known as one of the most peaceful, multicultural countries in the world, Canada has become the epicenter of a disturbing wave of anti-Jewish violence: weekly synagogue shootings, a Jewish girls' school in Toronto shot at three separate times, a Jewish grandmother stabbed in an Ottawa kosher supermarket, and 14 shots fired at a Jewish-owned restaurant on the second night of Passover. In this episode, Naya Lekht sits down with Jesse Brown — founder and publisher of CanadaLand, Canada's largest podcast network, winner of the Hillman Prize for Investigative Reporting, and author of the viral Atlantic piece "Canada's Polite Pogrom" — to investigate how this happened, why it's still happening, and what the rest of the world needs to understand before it's too late. Jesse doesn't offer easy answers. He traces the roots of the anti-Zionist hate movement from Nazi Germany through the Soviet Union into today's post-colonial academy, explains why Canada's multicultural identity left its institutions uniquely unprepared to recognize anti-Jewish hatred disguised as political activism, and argues that pleas for sympathy are a dead end. Instead, he makes the case for naming what we're actually up against: a radicalized ideology that believes what it says. This is one of the most honest conversations about Jewish life in the diaspora you'll hear this year. About the Guest Jesse Brown is the founder and publisher of CanadaLand, the first and largest podcast network in Canada. He is the winner of the Hillman Prize for Investigative Reporting and the National Magazine Award for Humor. CanadaLand's podcasts have won gold awards from the Signal Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. As a journalist, Jesse focuses on Canadian media — reporting and analysis of what the press gets right and what it gets wrong. Since October 7th, he has devoted his work to documenting anti-Jewish discrimination and the anti-Zionist hate movement in Canada, a focus that led to his recent limited audio series What Is Happening Here? and his viral Atlantic essay Canada's Polite Pogrom. Jesse will be joining Naya on stage May 17th at the first-ever World Symposium Against Anti-Zionism in Toronto. Listen & Follow 🎙️ Jesse's limited series: What Is Happening Here? — available wherever you get your podcasts 📰 Read: "Canada's Polite Pogrom" in The Atlantic 🎟️ World Symposium Against Anti-Zionism — Toronto, May 17, 2026 Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    41 min
  3. From Law to Culture: Where the Real Battle Is Being Fought

    22 MAR

    From Law to Culture: Where the Real Battle Is Being Fought

    On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht shifts the conversation from law to culture, arguing that while legal frameworks may lag behind, culture is where meaning is made, narratives are shaped, and ultimately, where battles over truth are won or lost. She is joined by journalist and columnist David C. Kaufman, whose work has appeared in Tablet, The New York Times, Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, and Telegraph. Together, they confront the alarming normalization of anti-Jewish rhetoric in public discourse—from the use of “Zionist” as a slur to the growing acceptance of October 7 denialism and justification. They explore why antizionism is increasingly functioning as a socially acceptable form of Jew-hatred, the difficulties of Jewish leadership to clearly name and confront ideological threats, the role identity politics may play in distorting reality, and how the embrace of Palestinianism within parts of the African American community has had serious consequences for its well-being. Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    1hr 1min
  4. 'You Started With a Tough Case:" Jews and Anti-Discrimination Law with Rona Kaufman

    15 MAR

    'You Started With a Tough Case:" Jews and Anti-Discrimination Law with Rona Kaufman

    On this episode of Don't Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Professor Rona Kaufman, co-founder of the Center for Jewish Legal Studies. Naya opens with a case study: a campus speaker who deploys libels against Israel. Is that legal? “Oof,” says Professor Kaufman, “you started with a tough case.” From there, the conversation moves into the basics of anti-discrimination law and free speech protections. To explain the difficulty of securing Jewish civil rights, Rona takes listeners and viewers on a historical journey, showing how women fought to define and expose discrimination in the workplace—and how naming what discrimination looks like was itself a crucial step in gaining legal protection. Throughout the episode, Naya presents a series of real-world scenarios for Rona to analyze, leading to a deeper question: what ultimately drives change—law or culture? Many behaviors we now recognize as unacceptable were once entirely legal. Did the law lead cultural change, or did culture push the law to evolve? This and more in a thought-provoking episode of Don't Know Much About. Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    1hr 7min
  5. Propaganda in the USSR, Virtue in the USA: Antizionism

    14 MAR

    Propaganda in the USSR, Virtue in the USA: Antizionism

    On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht examines a troubling paradox: why is antizionism in the West more dangerous than in the Soviet Union, the regime that invented it? Beginning with a personal observation from her mother, the episode traces how Soviet antizionist propaganda, once widely recognized as cynical state messaging, was transformed in Western universities into a moral cause. While the Soviet Union imposed antizionism from above through state propaganda, in the West, the same framework was repackaged through postcolonial theory, anti-imperialism, and academic scholarship, eventually embedding itself within university departments and activist culture. The episode explores how this transformation, from propaganda no one believed to an ideology many now embrace as virtue, creates a far more dangerous dynamic. When antizionism becomes framed as a moral duty rather than a political claim, dissent is treated as immorality and violence can appear justified in the name of justice. The result, Dr. Lekht argues, is a disturbing irony: ideas that required authoritarian enforcement in the Soviet Union now thrive organically within free societies. Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    12 min
  6. 25 Years of Campus Antizionism: An Investigative Report

    8 MAR

    25 Years of Campus Antizionism: An Investigative Report

    On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht traces how antizionism took root on American campuses, beginning with student activism in the early 2000s and becoming institutionalized through recurring campaigns such as Israel Apartheid Week and the BDS movement. By the time the campus encampments of 2023–2024 emerged, the movement had matured into something far more aggressive, raising urgent questions about how this ideological framework spread so widely across universities. The episode then turns to a deeper question: how did Jewish institutions respond as this movement developed? For years, antizionism was largely treated as political criticism rather than as an organized ideological campaign targeting Jewish collective legitimacy. Campus organizations often encouraged avoidance rather than confrontation, while major institutions framed the issue cautiously, focusing on when criticism of Israel might “cross the line” into antisemitism. Dr. Lekht argues that this conceptual hesitation limited the communal response and left antizionism largely unchallenged for years—raising the strategic question of whether confronting the movement will ultimately require grassroots mobilization before institutions fully recognize the scale of the challenge. Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    18 min
  7. Cold War Ghosts: The American Afterlife of Soviet Antizionism with Shaul Kelner

    24 FEB

    Cold War Ghosts: The American Afterlife of Soviet Antizionism with Shaul Kelner

    Antizionism has been described as a hate movement, as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, and, as I argue, the third era of Jew-hatred. But it can also be understood as one of the most powerful social movements of our time. Powerful not only in its reach, but in its ability to unify—cutting across political parties, generations, and national borders. So who better to explore antizionism as a social movement than my guest today, Professor Shaul Kelner of Vanderbilt University, a scholar of Jewish Studies and Sociology who specializes in contemporary Jewish life. His latest book, A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, won a National Jewish Book Award and examines how American Jews organized across ideological divides for a shared cause. I invited Professor Kelner because he recently authored what I consider one of the most important papers on the subject: American Antizionism. The title itself is telling. While many scholars trace antizionism’s Soviet genealogy, Shaul pushes us to examine how it has taken root and evolved in the United States. What does antizionism look like in the American context? How has it embedded itself in civic, academic, and Jewish institutional spaces? And why has there been so little education or clarity about it within American Jewish institutions themselves? We begin with Shaul’s research on the Soviet Jewry movement and then turn to a striking contrast: how antizionism, once engineered as state propaganda in the Soviet Union, has become more socially powerful and more normalized here in the United States than in the very system that produced it. Find out why. Listen.  Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    46 min
  8. Byline or Party Line? Journalism after October 7 with Kevin Deutsch

    13 FEB

    Byline or Party Line? Journalism after October 7 with Kevin Deutsch

    Journalist Kevin Deutch and founder of the Jewish watchdog Substack AFTER OCTOBER 7, joins Naya Lekht for a conversation about what happened to journalism, and why it matters now more than ever. As antizionism exploded across American streets, college campuses, and even K–12 schools, Kevin began documenting the shift in real time. In this episode, he reflects on his career in the newsroom and identifies a critical turning point: 2020. Between the social upheaval of the BLM movement and the COVID-19 pandemic, journalism fundamentally changed. An award-winning reporter and digital creator, Kevin covers general assignment news and Jewish communities for Talk Media in South Florida. He also writes for the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle and the St. Louis Jewish Light, and previously served as a senior staff writer at The Miami Times, a historic Black newspaper in Miami. In this candid discussion, Kevin shares stories that reveal what he describes as an anti-Israel shift, not only in media coverage, but in cultural institutions and the arts. One striking example: longtime quilter AJ Grossman’s work commemorating the October 7 hostages was rejected by QuiltCon 2026. Kevin digs into that story and many others, exposing the fault lines shaping today’s media landscape. Follow Kevin's work: https://www.bing.com/search?FORM=U523DF&PC=U523&q=Substack%2C+AFTER+OCTOBER+7&PC=U316&FORM=CHROMN Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.

    1hr 16min
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About

Don't Know Much About is a podcast hosted by Dr. Naya Lekht, a scholar and educator with a PhD from UCLA in Russian Literature. Each episode unpacks a contentious topic — from antizionism and Soviet history to Jewish identity and contemporary geopolitics — through rigorous research, personal stories, and candid conversations with leading thinkers. Clarifying the complex, one conversation at a time.

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