Charles Small

Charles Asher Small is the Founding Director and President of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and the Director of the ISGAP-Woolf Institute Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination and Human Rights at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK. He is also a Goldman Fellow at the Harold Hartog School of Government and Policy, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies, Tel Aviv University.

Small established the ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute in 2015, in which more than 400 Scholars-in-Residences from 48 countries and over 190 institutions worldwide graduated, establishing a vital network of scholars engaged in the study and teaching of critical contemporary antisemitism studies.

Small holds a BA in Political Science from McGill University, Montreal, an MSc in Urban Economic Development Planning from University College London, and a Doctorate of Philosophy (DPhil) from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. Small completed his post-doctorate research at the Groupement de recherche ethnicité et société at the Université de Montréal. He was VATAT Research Fellow (Ministry of Higher Education) at Ben Gurion University, Israel, and taught in the departments of sociology and geography at Goldsmiths, University of London, Tel Aviv University, and the Institute of Urban Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Small convened groundbreaking academic seminar series in the emerging field of contemporary antisemitism studies at Columbia University, Fordham University, Harvard University, McGill University, the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine, Sapienza University (Rome), the Sorbonne and the CNRS (Paris), Stanford University, the University of Miami, and Yale University, as well as an academic training programmes for professors at the Oxford colleges of Pembroke, Hertford, St. John’s, and St. Antony’s.

Small was the Founding Director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), the first interdisciplinary research center on antisemitism at a North American university. At Yale, he taught in the Political Science Department and the Program on Ethics, Politics and Economics, and ran a post-doctorate and graduate studies fellowship program. He was also an Associate Professor and the Director of Urban Studies at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University in the Department of Geography. Small lectures internationally and has worked as a consultant and policy advisor in North America, Europe, Southern Africa, and the Middle East. He specializes in social and cultural theory, globalization and national identity, sociocultural policy, social movements, and racism – including antisemitism.

Small is the author of several books and articles, including the five-volume Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity (2013), The Yale Papers: Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective (2015); The ISGAP Papers: Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective, Volume Two (2016); The ISGAP Papers: Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective, Volume Three (2018), and Social Theory – A Historical Analysis of Canadian Socio-Cultural Policies, “Race” and the “Other” (2013).

Small is committed to creating scholarly programming and research on contemporary antisemitism at top-tier universities around the world and establishing contemporary antisemitism studies as a recognized academic discipline. He is currently leading an international research project on the impact of soft power and undocumented funding on higher education as it pertains to antisemitism. Small is a human rights advocate, having served as Chair of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the Struggle for Ethiopian Jewry in Montreal, and as Chair of the African National Congress Solidarity Committee of Canada. He also worked on issues pertaining to the First Nations of what is now Canada, especially the Innu Nation.

He is engaged in the struggle against contemporary antisemitisms, the demonization of Israel and the Jewish People, and how it relates directly to other forms of hatred and reactionary social movements.