Academic Director and CEO
Senior Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London
David Hirsh has pioneered a sociological account of contemporary antizionism and its relationship to antisemitism. He has worked on crimes against humanity, totalitarianism, democracy and populism. He teaches core Sociology, Criminology, Crimes against Humanity and Human Rights courses at UG and MA level.
He was central in building the Engage network and website that led opposition to the proposal for an academic boycott of Israel from 2004 and that led the fight against antisemitic politics in Britain, especially on campus. Hirsh was a leading critic of the ideas underpinning the Corbyn movement and he has been instrumental in shaping the democratic and Jewish responses in Britain, and further afield, to antisemitism. He has a global reputation as a scholar and as leader of the fight against antisemitism. He has appeared as an expert witness in a number of court cases and inquiries, he has written formal reports, and he has chaired a university academic appeals panel on antisemitism.
Some of David Hirsh’s writing:
Books:
Hirsh, David. 2018. Contemporary Left Antisemitism. London: Routledge.
Hirsh, David. 2007. Law Against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials. London: Glasshouse.
Papers and articles:
Hirsh, David and Hilary Miller. 2022. Durban Antizionism: Its Sources, Its Impact, and Its Relation to Older Anti-Jewish Ideologies, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 5(1). Dedicated to the memory of Ronald Eissens and Suzette Bronkhorst.
Hirsh, David. 2021. How the word ‘Zionist’ functions in antisemitic vocabulary, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 4(2).
Hirsh, David. 2021. The Meaning of David Miller, Fathom.
In German: Antisemitismus in Großbritannien: Die Bedeutung von David Miller, Ruhrbarone.
In French: Le cas David Miller, K.
Allington, Daniel and Hirsh, David. 2019. The AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) Scale: Measuring Antisemitism as Expressed in Relation to Israel and Its Supporters, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 2(2).
Hirsh, David. 2019. Wistrich on Dreyfus, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 2(2).
Hirsh, David. 2019. Contemporary Struggles over Defining Antisemitism. In: Jonathan G. Campbell and Lesley D. Klaff, eds. Unity and Diversity in Contemporary Antisemitism: The Bristol – Sheffield Hallam Colloquium on Contemporary Antisemitism. Boston: Academic Studies Press.
Allington, Daniel; McAndrew, Siobhan and Hirsh, David. 2019. Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the far left, Commission for Countering Extremism, Home Office, London.
Hirsh David. 2018. In Memoriam Robert Fine (1945-2018). European Sociologist, 36(42).
Hirsh, David. 2017. How raising the issue of antisemitism puts you outside the community of the progressive: The Livingstone Formulation. In: Eunice G Pollack, ed. Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Past & Present. Boston: Academic Studies Press.
Hirsh, David. 2015. The Corbyn left: the politics of position and the politics of reason, Fathom, Autumn.
Hirsh, David. 2013. Hostility to Israel and antisemitism: towards a sociological approach. Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, JSA Vol 5:1.
Hirsh, David. 2012. Portia, Shylock and the exclusion of Israeli actors from the global cultural community, Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, JSA Vol 4:3.
Hirsh, David. 2011. Israel is not an idea which requires justification, it is a nation state forged by history. In: Ben Garratt, ed. Making the progressive case for Israel: a series of essays compiled by Labour Friends of Israel. London: Labour Friends of Israel, pp. 71–76.
Hirsh, David. 2010. Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conflict and about antisemitism: the Livingstone Formulation, ‘playing the antisemitism card’ and contesting the boundaries of antiracist discourse,’ Transversal. Zeitschrift für jüdische Studien, 11:1.
Hirsh, David. 2007. Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections. Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) Occasional Papers, New Haven, CT.
Hirsh, David. 2001. The trial of Andrei Sawoniuk: Holocaust testimony under cross-examination. Social and Legal Studies, Vol 10:4.
Films:
Hirsh, David and Anisfeld, Ollie. 2017. Whitewashed: Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Produced Judith Ornstein.
Frankenthal, Andrea and Hirsh, David. 2019. Forced Out: The Labour Antisemitism Resignation Letters. Produced Judith Ornstein.
Journalism:
Hirsh, David and Miller, Hilary. 2021. The UN Durban Antiracist Process: Projecting Racism Onto Israel. Jewish Journal, 19 September 2021.
Hirsh, David. 2021. The Jerusalem Declaration defines the “community of the good”, not antisemitism. Jewish Chronicle, 1 April 2021.
Hirsh, David. 2021. The Miller defenders’ letter shows how deep the issues around antisemitism go in academia. Jewish Chronicle, 26 February 2021.
Hirsh, David. 2021. A safe space for hate? How the UCU has an antisemitism problem. Left Foot Forward, 16 February 2021.
Hirsh, David. 2021. It was the new phenomenon of Israel-focused antisemitism that required the new definition of antisemitism. Fathom, January 2021.
Hirsh, David. 2020. Jews are asking for protection from their universities from antisemitism. Fathom, December 2020.
Hirsh, David. 2020. Labour must expel likes of JVL. Jewish Chronicle, 10 December 2020.
Hirsh, David. 2020. The Livingstone Formula is Dead. Jewish Chronicle, 30 October 2020.
Hirsh David. 2020. The Culture of Contempt: Anti-Semitism in the UK. inFocus, 14(2). Washington DC: Jewish Policy Center.
Hirsh, David. 2019. The UK Election 2019: Corbyn’s legacy is that political antisemitism has re-entered the British mainstream. Fathom, December 2019.
Hirsh, David. 2020. To understand Labour antisemitism, we need the detail and the big picture. Jewish Chronicle, 10 September 2020.
Hirsh, David. 2019. Not a crisis of the right or left but of our democratic community. Jewish News/Times of Israel, 5 December 2019.
Hirsh, David. 2019. Dangerous lure of the modern populist parties. Jewish Chronicle, 15 November 2019.
Hirsh, David. 2019. Why antisemitism and populism go hand in hand. Jewish News/Times of Israel, May 14 2019.
Hirsh, David. 2019. Labour’s intersection of antisemitism and misogyny. Jewish News/Times of Israel, 21 April 2019.
Hirsh David. 2018. Sorry Judas, the joke is not funny any more. Jewish Chronicle, 26 October 2018.
Hirsh David. 2018. Brexit and Corbynism could lead to a crisis of UK democracy. UK in a Changing Europe, 18 September 2018.
Hirsh David. 2018. Corbyn to Zionists: Even if you’ve always lived here, you don’t get us. Jewish News, 23 August 2018.
Hirsh, David. 2018. Stop accusing the Jewish community of conspiring against the left. Open Democracy, 9 August 2018.
Hirsh, David. 2018. Understanding Labour’s disavowal of the IHRA definition. Jewish News, 18 July 2018.
Hirsh, David. 2018. Ken Livingstone is being made into a scapegoat. Jewish Chronicle, 23 May 2018.
Hirsh, David. 2018. Labour’s anti-Semitism problem. Church Times, 27 April 2018.
Hirsh, David. 2018. The speech Jeremy Corbyn should make, but never will. Jewish News, 23 April 2018.
Hirsh, David. 2017. We need to teach our kids to think critically about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Jewish Chronicle, 4 December 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. Viele haben vergessen, was Marxismus ist. Jungle World, Interview, 23 November 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. Corbyn’s office ‘glad’ that Machover’s expulsion has been rescinded. Jewish News, 31 October 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. Antisemitic politics is the new normal. Jewish Chronicle, 16 June 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. We need to keep our heads. Jewish Chronicle, 10 May 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. Freer or Newmark? It’s an emancipating choice. Jewish News, 3 May 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. Livingstone, Labour and Antisemitism. Jewish Chronicle, 5 April 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2017. Livingstone still refuses to believe anti-Semitism is possible on the left. Jewish News, 30 March 2017.
Hirsh, David. 2016. This new definition of antisemitism is only a threat to antisemites. Jewish Chronicle, 12 December 2016.
Hirsh, David. 2016. Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and Antisemitism, Academic Engagement Network Series, no.1. December 2016. Pamphlet. Keynote presentation from AEN conference in May 2016.
Hirsh, David. 2016. Kein protest gegen armut. Jungle World, 7 July 2016.
Hirsh David. 2016. Submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry into Antisemitism and Other Racisms in the Labour Party.
Hirsh, David. 2016. Brexit could see the rise of racists across Europe. Jewish News, 20 June 2016.
Participant in BBC Radio 4, ‘Antisemitism on the Left’ The Briefing Room, David Aaronovitch, 19 May 2016.
Hirsh, David. 2016. The Livingstone Formulation fails to rescue Livingstone. TheJC.com, April 28 2016.
Hirsh, David. 2015. Jew Hate and Today’s Left. Jewish Chronicle, 17 March 2016, pp. 2-3.
Hirsh, David. 2015. Mr Corbyn, time to say you were wrong. Jewish Chronicle, 17 September 2015, p. 4.
Hirsh, David. 2015. The most threatening form of anti-Semitism in Britain today. Jewish News, 3 September 2015.
Hirsh David. 2015. If Corbyn Wins. Jerusalem Post, 24 August 2015.
Hirsh David. 2014. The American Studies Association boycott resolution, academic freedom and the myth of the institutional boycott. In (Ed) Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm, The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel. Also published in Inside Higher Ed, New York, 7 January 2014.
Hirsh, David. 2014. So how does it work, the quenelle? Left Foot Forward, London, 15 January 2014.
Hirsh, David. 2013. Ethnicity should have nothing to do with football identity. Left Foot Forward, London, September 18 2013.
Hirsh David. 2013. Struggles over the Boundaries of Legitimate Discourse: Antisemitism and Bad-Faith Allegations. In Charles Asher Small (Ed) Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity Vol V, Reflections, New York: ISGAP 2013, pp. 89-94.
Hirsh, David. 2012. Defining antisemitism down: The EUMC working definition and its disavowal by the university & college union. Fathom, 1(1), pp. 30–39.
Hirsh, David. 2011. No such thing as a victimless boycott. Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, 15 April 2011.
Hirsh, David. 2009. Do not confine Jews to the couch. Jewish Chronicle, London, 10 April 2009.
Hirsh, David. 2008. Occupation not apartheid. Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, 3 October 2008.
Hirsh, David. 2008. Unjust, unhelpful: arguments against the academic boycott of Israel. Democratiya 13, Summer 2008. Also the following debate with Martin Shaw in Democratiya 14.
34 op-ed blog pieces on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website.
