Unpacking Zionism

Who Owns the American Historical Association? Israel, the war lobby, and the fight for Palestine
In this episode, host Barry Trachtenberg speaks with Adam Rzepka, professor of literature at Montclair State University, about his Chronicle of Higher Education report on the American Historical Association's decision to veto member-passed resolutions condemning scholasticide in Palestine and academic repression. Rzepka's reporting reveals that AHA leadership spent at least $170,000 on Thorn Run Partners, a Washington lobbying firm whose clients have included suppliers to the Israeli military and a West Bank settlement builder, and that a lobbyist from the firm attended the January 2026 Council meeting, warned of advocacy-related risks, and departed shortly before the Council vetoed the resolutions. The ep. covers what was publicly known about the 2025 and 2026 votes against what was happening behind the scenes and what the Council's new willingness to use its veto, retain a lobbyist, and intervene in its own elections means for how the association might handle future member action on other matters.
Adam Rzepka is Associate Professor English College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University and author of "A Scholarly Association’s Secretive Washington Playbook,” published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Instagram Post) | Non-paywalled
Barry Trachtenberg holds the Rubin Presidential Chair in Jewish History at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and is on the Advisory Board of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.
2025 Scholasticide Resolution
Historians for Peace and Democracy
Historians for Palestine | Website | Instagram
Palestine Historians Group’s “We Refuse to be Silenced: The Palestinian Historians Group Responds to the AHA Council Vetoes”
JVP Academic Council Statement on the American Historical Association, Scholasticide, Genocide, and Academic Freedom Resolutions
Barry Trachtenberg, "Historians Have a Duty to Condemn Scholasticide in Gaza,” Jacobin (January 20, 2026)
Alan Parkes, "The American Historical Association, Scholasticide, and the Inherent Politics of History” Academe Blog, (February 10, 2026)
US Scholars Speak, "Confronting the Palestine Exception of the American Historical Association,” (July, 6, 2026)

In this episode of In Flames, Meira Gold & Roy Eidelson discuss a new Zionist "antisemitism training" aimed at students in psychology PhD programs. The program is funded and promulgated by the Academic Engagement Network (AEN).
The pilot program introduces "antisemitism" training into psychology programs across New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
Links & Resources
Drop the AEN
This is Not the New Curriculum Psychology Students Need | Roy Eidelson
From Above: Academic Engagement Network (AEN) | With Sean Malloy and Meira Gold
In Flames: APA Resolution | With Barry Trachtenberg, Lara Sheehi, & Jordan Dunn
Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: An Interview with Lara Sheehi by Jess Row for The Racial Imaginary Institute
Northwestern students blocked from enrollment after refusing controversial antisemitism training
Find other podcast episodes on our website at criticalzionismstudies.org/our-work/podcast-unpacking-zionism/
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Taylor Miller is a writer and researcher based between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. She earned her Ph.D. in political geography from the University of Arizona. Taylor is a Contributing Editor and writer for Columbia University’s Avery Review, and other recent works are featured with Social Text, Al Mayadeen, Weird Economies, The New Inquiry, Protean, with forthcoming essays in Yale School of Architecture’s Perspecta, Antipode and Kohl Journal. She’s motivated by border abolition and cactus propagation.
Resources:
https://averyreview.com/issues/70/silicon-wadi-silicon-desert
https://proteanmag.com/2024/05/13/against-these-walls-a-unity-of-struggle-from-gaza-to-sonora/
https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/walking-through-walls-and-scaling-the-roof-direct-action-to-end-the-genocide-in-palestine/

Bios:
Lara Sheehi: is a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences, a licensed clinical psychologist, and the host of the Psychic Militancy podcast. Lara’s work focuses on psychoanalysis, the psychic refusals central to liberation struggles and life-making in the Global South, the psychic dimensions of resistance and revolution, and critical Zionism studies. She is author of the forthcoming book, From the Clinic to the Streets Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto, 2026) and the co-author, with Stephen Sheehi, of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine which won the Middle East Monitor’s 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book. Lara is a member of the founding collective for the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and is on the advisory board for Forensic Architecture.
Jordan Dunn: is a licensed clinical psychologist based in New York City. He works as a supervising psychologist and organizer for community action and reflection at the Greene Clinic, a sliding scale, community psychoanalytic, training clinic. He also serves as a council representative at the American Psychological Association representing APA Division 39 the society of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychology. Trained at the New School for Social Research, he has received multiple fellowships, and publishes on psychotherapy and culture. He organizes locally with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and is part of Jewish Psychologists for Justice, a grassroots organizing group fighting for collective liberation.
Barry Trachtenberg: is a historian of modern Jewish history and the Holocaust and author of several books on Jewish history and the Nazi Holocaust. He has published on issues related to American support for Israel, Zionism, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism in venues such as Jewish Currents, the Guardian, Jacobin, the Forward, Electronic Intifada, and Mondoweiss. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Boards of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, the steering committee of the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, and is Faculty Affiliate of the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers Law School. He holds the Rubin Presidential Chair in Jewish History at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.

Episode's resources:
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/stop-calling-right-wing-criticism-of-israel-anti-zionism/