“Who is Tony Judt?” a woman wanted to know. We were at a cocktail party at the offices of a left-wing publisher in Dumbo in March, and the name of the controversial British-born European historian and public intellectual was in the air.
A friend of hers who was hovering nearby, a man Read More
Historian Tony Judt, who taught at NYU, died Friday of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). From The Guardian‘s obituary:
In his guise as a political and historical essayist, he was a fearless critic of narrow orthodoxies and bullying cliques, from communist apologists to the Israel lobby, from “liberal hawks” to progressive educationists. And his Read More
This weekend, The New York Times Op-Ed page published contributions from Tony Judt and his fifteen-year-old son Daniel. On no apparent factual basis, Michael Wolff announced that Judt had fabricated his son’s writing.
Today the younger Judt takes to the internet to respond. In a piece for the Daily Beast, he Read More
Ever notice that the NYTimes.com most-emailed list is slanted toward an older demographic? Maybe because only folks over a certain age—like our Aunt Mabel—still use the email tool. Here’s a quick, annotated guide to what grandma and grandpa thought you might be interested in from NYTimes.com …
An Observation:In today’s print edition there are three Read More
For a story in today's Observer about how the rise of a Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel is affecting Middle East dialogue in America, I spoke with Tony Judt, a noted academic and historian and a provocative critic of some of Israel's supporters in the U.S.
Netanyahu's policies are, from Judt's left-of-center Read More
Will the rise of an Israeli government led by an opponent of the peace process make it more politically acceptable in America to criticize Israel?
Abraham Foxman says yes.
"It's already changed," said Mr. Foxman, whose position as national director of the Anti-Defamation League makes him the media's go-to person for quotes on perceived anti-Israel Read More
One of the most divisive fault lines in American intellectual life is cracking open again, playing out in the pages of The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The New Republic, and forcing some of the city’s best-known intellectuals to pick sides.
Nearly five years after prominent liberal hawks supported Read More
The New York Times’ stunning piece last week about the American Jewish Committee’s effort to smear leftwing Jewish critics of Israel as antisemites did what 1000 blogs, 100 human rights reports, even 10 pieces by Tony Judt, could never do: It embarrassed the Jewish leadership, by exposing the retrograde methods it has resorted to Read More
I emailed Tony Judt to tell him how Dershowitz had characterized his position re Israel. Judt responded:
“It is a lie, and implicitly defamatory (a dissolver of Israel is an anti-Zionist is an anti-semite, etc…). From Dershowitz one expects no better. But thanks to Leon [Wieseltier] it is the received reading of my Read More
The other day at Brandeis, Alan Dershowitz, responding to Jimmy Carter, took a shot at NYU’s Tony Judt because of Judt’s famous call (in the New York Review of Books) to give up on the idea of a Jewish state.
“Tony Judt is in favor of the complete dissolution of the state of Israel… the Read More
