How did feminism get 7 October so wrong? The Hamas attacks and their aftermath exposed deep tensions within a feminist movement that has long claimed to stand with women affected by prejudice and discrimination.

As questions of race, privilege and power have moved to the centre of feminist politics, Jewish women have been recast as symbols of whiteness; and privilege, despite a long history of exclusion, discrimination and persecution. Why is antisemitism within feminism often treated differently from other forms of prejudice? What does that mean for the future of feminism? And is there a place for Jewish women in feminism anymore?

Kara Jesella argues that the answer lies not in a failure of information, but in the ideas that have come to dominate contemporary feminist thinking. In this keynote, she will trace how theories of race, power, privilege and decolonisation have shaped feminist understandings of Jews and Zionism. She examines the assumptions that have marginalised Jewish women within progressive movements, and considers how the treatment of Jewish women after 7 October exposed weaknesses in feminist thinking that limit feminism’s ability to understand reality more broadly.

Kara Jesella is a feminist scholar based in New York City and a Fellow of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. She has a PhD and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, where she was the Managing Editor of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and a BA in Women’s Studies and English from Vassar College. A former journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Quillette, Ms., and many other publications, and authored a book on Sassy magazine that was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Follow Kara on X: @karajesella