Israel in Black and White

Learn how and why Afro-Asian Jews in Israel became associated and engaged with Global Black thought throughout the 20th century in a virtual talk by Professor Bryan K. Roby on Thursday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. EDT. Registration is required. “Roby is an innovative scholar of social movements. Those familiar with the Israeli Black Panther movement of the 1970s iommediately understood that they had taken their insiparation from the Black Panthers in the United States. Roby’s scholarship shows us how much deeper the connections run. I look forward to hearing his analysis of the continued influence of black though on identity and social movements in Israel today.”says Deborah Starr, director of the Jewish Studies Program. Roby is an Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. His expertise is on 20th century Israeli and North African Jewish history. His research and teaching interests include Jewish racial constructs; policing and civil rights globally; and 19th and 20th century North African history. He is the author of "The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle 1948-1966" (Syracuse University Press, 2015) about social justice protests in Israel. He is is currently working on a second book, "Israel through a Colored Lens: Racial Constructs in the Israeli Jewish Imagination," that explores the shifting boundaries of racial constructs in Israel/Palestine as well as African-American intellectual contributions to Israeli sociology and theories on race and ethnicity. This talk is sponsored by the Cornell University Jewish Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Near Eastern Studies Department.