Three years after October 7, the conversation about antisemitism reaches far beyond the immediate aftermath of the attacks. It touches universities, political movements, foreign funding, and the everyday decisions Jews make about belonging. This week, I spoke with Charles Asher Small about how those all connect, and what he believes institutions and Jewish communities should do next. Small leads the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). He described its ambition to connect academic research with public policy, and our conversation followed that path: from a broad diagnosis of democratic fragmentation to questions about evidence, university leadership, and Jewish identity. His opening argument was that antisemitism thrives amid wider social and institutional weaknesses. He described the extreme left, extreme right, and radical political Islam as different forces attacking the democratic centre. In his analysis, hostility towards Jews provides a point of convergence between movements that otherwise have little in common. Foreign influence and the institutions shaping opinion That led us to ‘strategic entryism’, the term his team uses to describe ideological influence entering established institutions. Small focused on the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, arguing that funding and networks can advance the movement’s ideas within Western universities and cultural life, something I have covered separately at JNS. He sees universities as especially consequential because they educate future journalists, professors, and political leaders. He argues that the financial pressure faced by universities makes them more receptive to outside money, while the ideas circulating within them eventually reach wider society - a serious allegation about institutional influence. “If you think of what happened at universities on October the 8th, 2023, this to me is a watershed moment where people, I think, were shocked,” he said. “But this has been sort of in the works for decades.” I wanted to understand how his team measures the impact of the funding it identifies, beyond pointing to protests or shifts in rhetoric. He cited ISGAP’s 2023 “Networks of Hate” report, saying universities receiving Qatari funds had “300% more instances of antisemitism” than those that did not, although he acknowledged the difficulty of scientifically proving the broader ideological relationship he described. The exchange raised an essential question: how do we establish what money changes, as well as where it goes? Criticism, antisemitism, and the question of belonging We also discussed his concerns about propaganda and social media. While the central focus of ISGAP has been the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, Small described Iran, Russia, and China as contributing to an environment that fragments Western societies through infiltration and propaganda, including the use of bots. It was here I wanted to challenge him. Universities have long been places of protest, and I believe Israel’s government is as open to criticism as any other. So where does legitimate political opposition end, and antisemitism begin? “We have to define antisemitism in a scientific, comprehensive manner that allows for criticism,” he said, accepting that Israeli policies can be criticized. But institutions must also recognize rhetoric and movements that dehumanize Jews. Later, he spoke about Jewish families questioning whether they could remain in countries where they had lived for generations (something I have written about before), and framed this vulnerability as a warning about the condition of democratic citizenship. The new Hebrew University-European Forum Barometer offers a passing echo of those concerns: Israeli respondents overwhelmingly viewed Israel as safer for Jews than Europe, while Jewish Israelis reported strengthened Israeli identity. Those are perceptions, rather than a test of Small’s explanations, but they show how immediate questions of safety and belonging have become. When I asked what he would do as a university president, Small’s answer began with education. Students should study democratic principles and understand their responsibilities as citizens, he argued. “To live in a democratic society, every generation has a choice.” We discussed greater transparency around foreign university funding and ISGAP’s efforts to turn research into policy through the DETERRENT Act, a congressional bill designed to increase oversight and lower reporting thresholds for foreign gifts and contracts at colleges and universities that receive federal student aid. The House of Representatives passed the bill in March 2025, and it has been referred to the Senate. “Jewish Consciousness” and life after October 7 The conversation's final turn came when Small described ISGAP’s Jewish Consciousness framework, which draws parallels from South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement and the influence of Black Consciousness. He argued that we Jews should define ourselves by drawing on our own traditions, knowledge, and history rather than accepting labels imposed onto us by hostile outsiders. I raised what I called “the hijacking of history”: How Israel’s critics exploit language associated traditionally with Jewish persecution, and apply it against Jews themselves. “One of the things that we need to do is define ourselves based on our terms,” he replied. That thought brought the episode’s different strands together. Small’s proposed response combines research, institutional accountability, democratic education, and a deeper understanding of Jewish identity. Our conversation moved between what others say about Jews and what Jews can say about themselves. Three years ago, questions were urgent and immediate: security, safety, who was funding what. This episode suggests those questions remain, but have evolved beyond how institutions should respond to antisemitism, toward who gets to define what being Jewish even means while that fight continues. [Preview: “Strategic Entryism”: How Qatar’s money entered America’s universities] Get full access to The Spiro Circle at www.thespirocircle.com/subscribe
