ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia queston: Why is it difficult to decide on a definition of antisemitism?

Alejandro Baer is a Spanish sociologist and also one of the founders of Radio Sefarad. He was born in Argentina and grew up in Madrid, where he completed his undergraduate and graduate studies.

His research interests include reparative justice, the comparative study of antisemitism, and the politics of genocide memory, with a particular focus on Spain and the Spanish-speaking world. His publications include the books Holocausto. Recuerdo y representación (2006), El testimonio audiovisual. Imagen y memoria del Holocausto (2005) and Memory and Forgetting in the post-Holocaust Era. He co-authored The Ethics of Never Again with Natan Sznaider (2017).

Between 1999 and 2012 Dr. Baer held teaching positions at universities in Madrid, Munich, and Bayreuth, Germany. Between 2012 and 2021, he was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and served as the Director of the University´s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He is currently a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid.

Dr. Baer spoke with us about the current situation of antisemitism in the United States and the national strategy to combat it that was released by the Biden administration on May 25.