Reckoning with October 7: Israel, Hamas, and the Problem of Critical Theory
A TPPI Conference
November 8–9, 2024
New York City
 The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute welcomes paper proposals for a conference that reckons with the response, both within higher education at large and especially from the precincts of critical theory, to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The conference will cap a year of webinars, podcasts, blog posts, and publications about the topic, and will form the basis of a special memorial issue of the journal Telos. Full papers intended for that special issue will also be considered at this time.
Beginning in the immediate, politicized aftermath of the Hamas atrocities, theory has been present—in ways that should give us pause. It was present in sublimated ways, as widespread presuppositions and “narratives” infused with charismatic authority by a popularized postcolonial jargon. It was there in kinetic, emotionally charged, intellectually unsophisticated responses, in “mass” demonstrations, public statements by groups and institutions, and individual social media campaigns. It was there in “intersectional” ideology. Yet above all, it was manifest in considered, open, intentional ways within universities, as well as among educated elites taught and credentialed by them. The college campus, the traditional home of critical theory—which emerged in the twentieth century most powerfully as a response to fascism and Nazism—has become a nodal point for the dramatic unfolding of a cognitively, morally, and politically deficient discourse about a present-day Kristallnacht.
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By Casey Spinks · Wednesday, January 31, 2024 For Gabriel Noah Brahm’s preface to this essay, click here.
In the first panel of TPPI’s Israel Initiative webinar series devoted to discussing the atrocities of October 7, one of the chief points of debate was whether critical theory—or any other theory—was up to the task of reckoning with Hamas’s massacre of Jews and its ensuing embrace from certain parts of academia.
Abe Silberstein cautioned that it is not helpful to emphasize the disruptive character of these attacks or the notion that something new has happened. Instead, violence like this is, unfortunately, what human beings have been doing to each other for a long time. And Silberstein, thus, seems committed to the tough work of theorizing about these events and distinguishing carefully where their academic boosters have erred in their theorizing about them.
Cary Nelson, Gabriel Noah Brahm, and Manuela Consonni, however, held that there is not much theory going on. Nelson even admitted that “no theory that I’ve been working with for the past sixty years” is up to the job of understanding or explaining this event. Consonni also cautioned that it’s not a matter of “whether or not Franz Fanon is being followed.” They agree that there is something more sinister at work than bad theory.
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By The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute · Saturday, January 27, 2024 As part of its Israel initiative, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute has published a podcast conversation with Prof. Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, about the role of critical theory in the response within higher education to the Hamas atrocities of October 7. This conversation follows TPPI’s webinar on January 7 on the same subject with Nelson, Abe Silberstein, and Manuela Consonni. The podcast is available in both video and purely audio forms. TPPI will be publishing podcasts featuring open-ended conversations with individual participants in its Israel initiative webinar series throughout the year.
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By Collin May · Monday, January 15, 2024 Gabriel Noah Brahm’s interview with Collin May appears here.
The rapid expansion of woke ideology and its attendant cancel culture has produced both a popular and an academic backlash. The recent appearance by the trio of university presidents before the House of Representatives Education Committee has only served to focus that backlash against the conformism and anti-free speech culture that dominate many university campuses.
On a popular level, we are all familiar with concepts such as anti-racism, settler colonialism, and the ubiquitous EDI—equity, diversity, and inclusion. On the intellectual level, the backlash focuses on a growing sense of scholarly puritanism attributed to anti-Enlightenment theories that underly these public concepts. The theories include: neo-feminism; postmodernism, often with a Foucauldian inspiration; and critical theory. As far as critical theory is concerned, the spotlight shines on German-American critical theorist Herbert Marcuse.
Marcuse is famous for an essay he wrote in 1965 entitled “Repressive Tolerance.” In it, he argued that tolerance in the liberal capitalist West was simply a veil that oppressive right-wing movements and state institutions used to dominate public discourse while silencing left-leaning activism. In response, Marcuse called for the outright suppression of speech and discourse deemed right-wing. In other words, intolerance for allegedly right-leaning narratives, with untrammeled promotion of the supposedly emancipatory left-leaning narratives.
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By The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute · Wednesday, January 10, 2024 The first webinar in our yearlong series reckoning with the response to October 7 is available here. Panelists included Cary Nelson, Abe Silberstein, and Manuela Consonni. Their conversation was moderated by Israel initiative director Gabriel Noah Brahm. Eighty audience members heard their illuminating conversation, which provided a model of respectful engagement amidst disagreement, and many stayed for another hour for a casual, after-panel discussion.
The next webinar in the Israel webinar series will take place on Wednesday, February 7, at noon ET.
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By The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute · Thursday, November 30, 2023 Updated Schedule and Format, Registration Information
Panel 1: “Critical Theory in Light of October 7”
The first panel in our series of webinars in response to October 7 will take place on Sunday, January 7, 2024, at noon Eastern Standard Time. Register for the webinar here.
In light of the vigorous response we received to our recent conference announcement, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute is enhancing the format and expanding the schedule of its initiative about Israel, Hamas, critical theory, and the university. These changes will allow us to cultivate and refine a carefully sustained conversation while events in the Middle East and on campus continue to unfold.
Rather than—as originally announced—hosting just a single, digital gathering on January 12–13, we will instead be hosting a webinar series on different aspects of the topic each month for one full year.
We continue to plan for an in-person conference on the subject as well, to be convened in early October 2024, and we expect to make an announcement about its location shortly.
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