DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Salem on the Thames

Moral Panic, Anti-Zionism, and the Triumph of Hate Speech at Connecticut College

Richard Landes author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Academic Studies Press

Published:30th Apr '20

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Salem on the Thames cover

In the Spring of 2015, a post-modern version of the Salem witchcraft trials took place at Connecticut College on the Thames River. Only this time instead of sorcery it was Zionism; instead of punishing in the name of God's law it was in the name of anti-hate speech and inclusive excellence; instead of young teenage girls leading the hysteria it was college-aged social warriors stampeding 200 professors into sacrificing one of their colleagues, and thereby contributing to a wave of administration-promoted hate-speech at their college.

The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards "public shaming" that not only deeply compromises the integrity of academia, but increasingly spreads to many aspects of our society, so susceptible to media-driven feeding frenzies.

Salem on the Thames is a collection of essays, but most of them, including a very helpful annotated chronology of events, are by Landes, who has also compiled an extensive archive of primary-source documents at his blog. He and his other contributors dissect each and every way Pessin was sucker punched, lied to, manipulated, and thrown under the bus.”

— Elliot Kaufman, Jewish Review of Books

ISBN: 9781644690994

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

218 pages