Maud Mandel explains Muslim-Jewish conflict in France

Brown dean speaks at LLC brown bag lunch

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Dr. Maud Mandel, dean of the college and professor of history and Judaic studies at Brown University, will speak on “Understanding the Muslim-Jewish Conflict in France: A Historical Overview” for the Lifelong Learning Collaborative brown bag lunch on Sept. 29 from noon to 1 p.m.

Mandel’s talk will center on the conflict that has long shadowed Muslim-Jewish relations in France. Although anti-Semitic violence began capturing international attention in 2000, Muslim-Jewish tensions were, in fact, the subject of commentary much earlier in the century, when a diverse range of social actors, including international Jewish representatives, anti-Zionist Algerian nationalists, French police and Jewish and Muslim student activists, began to fear that Middle Eastern conflict was coming to France.

She will argue, however, that focusing solely on the Middle East in an effort to understand Muslim-Jewish politics in France misses key aspects of the story. While global developments created fault lines around which activists began to mobilize, the nature of that mobilization, the political rhetoric employed and the success – or lack thereof – of their appeal emerged from French political transformations. Furthermore, as a reductionist-charged narrative of polarization took hold, it often obscured a more complex inter-ethnic reality.

Mandel is the author of “In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth Century France” (Duke University Press, 2003) and “Muslims and Jews in France: History of Conflict” (Princeton University Press, 2014) and co-editor, with Ethan Katz and Lisa Leff, of the forthcoming “Colonialism and the Jews” (Indiana University Press, 2017). She has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Society. Her most recent article “Simone Weil: A Jewish Thinker?” will be published in the volume “Thinking Jewish Modernity” (Princeton University Press 2016).

The program takes place at Temple Beth-El, Providence. Registration is not required and admission is free. Participants are asked to observe Jewish dietary laws if bringing a lunch.

Lifelong learning collaborative, Maud Mandel