Latest news with #JoshDubnau
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How rogue jumping genes can spur Alzheimer's, ALS
Back in 2008, neurovirologist Renée Douville observed something weird in the brains of people who'd died of the movement disorder ALS: virus proteins. But these people hadn't caught any known virus. Instead, ancient genes originally from viruses, and still lurking within these patients' chromosomes, had awakened and started churning out viral proteins. Our genomes are littered with scraps of long-lost viruses, the descendants of viral infections often from millions of years ago. Most of these once-foreign DNA bits are a type called retrotransposons; they make up more than 40 percent of the human genome. Many retrotransposons seem to be harmless, most of the time. But Douville and others are pursuing the possibility that some reawakened retrotransposons may do serious damage: They can degrade nerve cells and fire up inflammation and may underlie some instances of Alzheimer's disease and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease). The theory linking retrotransposons to neurodegenerative diseases — conditions in which nerve cells decline or die — is still developing; even its proponents, while optimistic, are cautious. 'It's not yet the consensus view,' says Josh Dubnau, a neurobiologist at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in New York. And retrotransposons can't explain all cases of neurodegeneration. Yet evidence is building that they may underlie some cases. Now, after more than a decade of studying this possibility in human brain tissue, fruit flies and mice, researchers are putting their ideas to the ultimate test: clinical trials in people with ALS, Alzheimer's and related conditions. These trials, which borrow antiretroviral medications from the HIV pharmacopeia, have yielded preliminary but promising results. Meanwhile, scientists are still exploring how a viral reawakening becomes full-blown disease, a process that may be marked by what Dubnau and others call a 'retrotransposon storm.' A retrotransposon is a kind of 'jumping gene.' These pieces of DNA can (or once could) move around in the genome by either copying or removing themselves from one spot and then pasting themselves into a new spot. Retrotransposons are copy-and-pasters. Many retrotransposons are old companions: Some predate the evolution of Homo sapiens or even the split between plants and animals, Dubnau says. Their predecessors may have alternated between riding along stitched into a host chromosome and existing outside of it, he suggests. Some retrotransposons, after all that time, retain their ability to hop around human DNA. To do so, they copy themselves with the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which is also used by some viruses like HIV to copy RNA sequences into DNA. Once they're copied, the remnant viruses can pop into new locations on chromosomes. If it's terrifying to think of a genome littered with retroviral genes, some capable of bouncing around the genome, don't fret, says Douville, now at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Remarkably, some retrotransposons have taken on helpful jobs, assisting the body with tasks like maintaining stem cells and development of the embryo and nervous system. And many retrotransposons are dormant or broken, and the cell has means to keep them (mostly) quiet. One technique is to stash them in DNA regions that are wound up so tight that the molecular machines needed to copy genes can't get near them. In essence, the cell shoves them into a closet and slams the door shut. But evidence is building that as people age, that closet door can creak open, letting retrotransposons spill out. Exactly what they do then isn't certain. Some scientists think it's not so much that they are jumping around and mutating DNA, but that their viralesque RNAs and proteins can screw up normal cellular activities. 'I think what's actually driving toxicity when transposons are activated is they're making all these factors that look like a virus to the cell,' says Bess Frost, a neurobiologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The cell reacts, quite reasonably, with defensive inflammation, which is commonly associated with neurodegeneration. Retrotransposons also seem to team up with rogue proteins classically linked to neurodegeneration, damaging or killing nerve cells, and perhaps even setting off the disease in the first place. Scientists long suspected a link between viruses and ALS, which causes degeneration of the motor neurons that control movement. But the connection, when it was finally found, wasn't quite what anyone predicted. In the early 2000s, scientists reported that some people with ALS had the viral enzyme reverse transcriptase in their blood and, more rarely, spinal fluid. Some had as much reverse transcriptase as a person with an HIV infection. But at the time, says Dubnau, 'Nobody could find a virus.' Finally, Douville and colleagues discovered evidence for one of those leftover viruses, a kind of retrotransposon called HERV-K, in the brains of some people who had died of ALS. From there, scientists began to build a case linking jumping genes to ALS in people, lab animals and cells in dishes. A team reported in 2017 that numerous jumping genes had been activated in the brains of certain people with ALS. Douville's colleagues also documented damage inflicted by HERV-K: When they put a gene from the retrotransposon into mice, the animals' nerve cell projections shriveled and they exhibited ALS-like symptoms. As the scientists zeroed in on what might be waking up HERV-K, a familiar protein turned up. Called TDP-43, it had already been linked to ALS. But even before that, it was found to be involved in cells' responses to the retrovirus HIV. Scientists discovered in the 1990s that TDP-43 works in the cell's nucleus, where it hinders activation of HIV genes. It also regulates human genes there. But in the neurons of people with ALS or a related condition, frontotemporal dementia (FTD), TDP-43 departs the nucleus and goes on to form abnormal clumps in the cytoplasm. The globs have been associated with a number of neurodegenerative conditions and can spread from cell to cell. And when TDP-43 vacates the nucleus, it also creates a gap in gene regulation, throwing off the activity levels of many genes. TDP-43 gone bad is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration, but studies indicate its desertion of its nuclear role can also wake up retrotransposons. When TDP-43 leaves the nucleus, tightly coiled DNA next to certain retrotransposons starts to loosen up and unravel, a study of cells from the brains of people who died of ALS or FTD revealed. And researchers saw that in cultured cells, this loss of TDP-43 freed certain retrotransposons from their restraints. The closet door was now ajar, in other words, allowing the retrotransposons to jump out and around. Meanwhile, Dubnau and collaborators, were looking at data on TDP-43 and the genes it controls in rats, mice and people. They found that TDP-43 can naturally stick to the RNAs of a variety of jumping genes, suggesting a way that normal TPD-43 might continue to corral them, even if they've managed to get copied into RNA. That interaction was altered in people with FTD and in rodents with abnormally high or low amounts of TDP-43 — very much as if TDP-43 was unable to control the jumping genes anymore. The Dubnau group also turned to fruit flies. Both old age and the human TDP-43 gene caused retrotransposons in the fly brain to sneak out of the chromosomal closet, inducing brain cells to kill their neighbors and prompting neurodegeneration, the group reported in a series of papers from 2013 to 2023. Moreover, activation of certain retrotransposons also caused TDP-43 to clump together outside of the nucleus, creating a vicious cycle whereby TDP-43 and the retrotransposons reinforce each other's abnormal behaviors. Past a certain point, says Dubnau, 'It just takes off.' Based on the sum of all these findings, Dubnau suggests a possible way that ALS could develop: Normally, TDP-43 in the nucleus helps to repress retrotransposons. But if aging or some other disturbance causes TDP-43 to decamp, those once-silenced retrotransposons spring to life, producing virus-like RNAs and proteins. While the retrotransposons might induce disease on their own, by jumping into new DNA locations or spurring inflammation, they also act on TDP-43. They force more TDP-43 to leave the nucleus and clump in the cytoplasm, causing further neurodegeneration that spreads to neighboring cells. This isn't the cause of all kinds of ALS, which is a complex disorder with many possible triggers. But in a 2019 study of postmortem brain samples, Dubnau and colleagues found that about one in five people with ALS had high levels of retrotransposon activation and TDP-43 dysfunction. Stay in the KnowSign up for the Knowable Magazine newsletter today As that ALS story was developing, other scientists were pursuing a connection between retrotransposons and another toxic protein in neurodegeneration: the tau protein, which twists into unruly tangles in the brain cells of people with Alzheimer's disease. It affects retrotransposons because it, like TDP-43, plays a role in keeping retrotransposons quiet, says Frost. That maintenance is a downstream effect of tau's association with the cell's interior skeleton. That skeleton is physically linked to the nucleus's skeletal structure, which in turn anchors the tightly wound-up DNA that silences retrotransposons. When tau goes bad, it changes the structure of the cell's main skeleton, making it more rigid. Frost and colleagues found that this structural defect propagates all the way to the nuclear skeleton and the chromosomes, just like tightening the strands on one side of a net could change the shape of the other side. This structural effect can unlock the tightly wound bits of chromosome in fruit flies, which damages their neurons, Frost reported in 2014. By 2018, she'd shown that tau problems unleashed jumping genes in the flies. 'They were legitimately jumping,' she says, going from their original chromosomal locations to other ones in the fly's brain cells. And the jumping genes contributed to the death of nerve cells. Frost and colleagues also studied mammals — mice — and in 2022 they reported that retrotransposons were also activated in mice with dysfunctional tau. Meanwhile, Frost and others examined brain cells from people who'd died of tau-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, which also revealed activated retrotransposons. 'They were legitimately jumping.' — BESS FROST This awakening of retrotransposons appears to happen early in the disease, according to the work of another team published in 2022. In blood samples from people on their way to developing Alzheimer's disease, the copying of retrotransposon genes into RNAs spiked, creating a 'retrotransposon storm,' just before their symptoms got bad enough to be labeled Alzheimer's. This growing body of evidence suggests that reactivating once-quiet retrotransposons, whether via dysfunctional tau or TDP-43, can create havoc. A potential treatment quickly comes to mind: Since these retrotransposons are a lot like viruses, scientists reason that antiviral drugs could help. Handily, doctors already have medications that stymie retroviruses: Millions of people take antiretroviral drugs to keep HIV in check or prevent it from gaining a foothold in their cells. Indeed, multiple studies over several years have investigated drugs from the HIV treatment playbook that block the enzyme reverse transcriptase. And in cells, flies and mice the drugs have dialed down retrotransposon activity and neurodegeneration. These medications are well understood and generally safe, and are already in trials for neurodegenerative disease. For example, researchers have tested the safety of a 24-week antiretroviral course in 40 people with ALS. Not only did most people safely complete the trial, but the levels of HERV-K in their blood went down, and they seemed to have a delay in progression of their ALS symptoms, the researchers reported in 2019. Frost recently published results from a small trial in which 12 people with early Alzheimer's disease took a reverse transcriptase inhibitor for 24 weeks. Her main goal was to determine if the treatment was safe, and it was — but the researchers also observed a drop in signs of inflammation in the participants' spinal fluid. Both Dubnau and Frost serve on the scientific advisory board for Transposon Therapeutics, which tested its own reverse transcriptase inhibitor in 42 people with ALS and/or FTD. The company says the drug was tolerable and yielded signs of less neurodegeneration and inflammation, plus a delay in the inevitable worsening of symptoms. The company is planning a larger trial; it also plans to test its drug in people with ALS, Alzheimer's and a related tau-based disease, progressive supranuclear palsy. Neither Frost nor Dubnau, who together recently summarized the field for the Annual Review of Neuroscience, believes that antiretroviral drugs alone are the solution to transposon-fueled Alzheimer's or ALS. As Douville notes, the drugs were designed to act only on specific target enzymes — they won't do anything to other retrotransposon genes, RNAs or proteins, which could also spur nerve-damaging inflammation. Meanwhile, scientists are looking beyond ALS and Alzheimer's as evidence accumulates that retrotransposons may contribute to other neurodegenerative and inflammatory conditions, such as Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. 'It's really picking up speed,' Frost says. This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Jewish organizers are increasingly confronting Trump: ‘The repression is growing, but so is the resistance'
On the morning of Columbia University's commencement last week, an intergenerational group of Jewish alumni gathered in the rain outside the Manhattan campus's heavily policed gates, wearing keffiyehs and shirts emblazoned with the words 'not in our name'. Two had graduated more than 60 years earlier, and one spoke of having fled the Nazis to the US as a child. Others recalled participating in Columbia protests of the past, including those that led the university to divest from apartheid South Africa. They spoke as alumni and as Jews to condemn the university's investments in Israel, its repression of pro-Palestinian speech, and its capitulation to the Trump administration's assault on academic freedom in the name of fighting antisemitism on campus. They had planned to burn their Columbia diplomas in protest, but the rain got in their way, so many ripped them to pieces instead. 'As a Jewish person, I'm really appalled at the idea that they are trying to make it sound as if opposing genocide is somehow antisemitic,' said Josh Dubnau, a professor at Stony Brook University who received a PhD from Columbia in 1995 and led the protest. 'There are thousands of us who don't believe in the right of the Jewish people to ethnically cleanse Palestine. There were Jews thousands of years before Zionism, and there will be Jews when Zionism is in the dustbin of history.' Another alumna, who graduated last year after being suspended over her participation in campus protests, wore a graduation gown and carried the photo of one of nearly 15,000 Palestinian students killed in Gaza during the current war. 'We have a particular duty to show up as Jews because we are not being actively targeted in the way that Palestinian students, Muslim students and Arab students are,' said the student, who asked to remain anonymous. 'It's our duty to weaponise our privilege as Jewish students.' New York police arrested her along with another protester after they set their Columbia diplomas on fire. Nineteen months into Israel's war in Gaza and the US protest movement it prompted, allegations of antisemitism on campuses have become one of the primary pretexts for the Trump administration's multipronged attack on higher education, including billions in funding cuts, demands universities submit to a string of measures curtailing their academic freedom, and the detention and attempted deportation of international students who expressed pro-Palestinian views. But increasingly, Jewish students, faculty and alumni are pushing back against the exploitation of antisemitism charges to justify repressive policies they say do not represent their Jewish values. They have written letters, led protests, lobbied legislators and denounced what they say is the systematic exclusion of Jewish perspectives that are critical of Israel from the national conversation over antisemitism. Jewish Americans – some identifying as 'anti-Zionists', others with a range of views about Israel – have been at the forefront of the movement against the war in Gaza. Last summer, some 200 people, almost all Jewish, were arrested at a protest on Capitol Hill a day before a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this year, more than 350 rabbis, along with more Jewish creatives and activists, signed a New York Times ad denouncing Donald Trump's proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But Jewish-led organising has broadened in recent months. As Jewish Americans continue to protest the war, they are also taking on Trump's onslaught against higher education in the name of Jewish safety, rallying around detained students and condemning what they view as the exploitation of antisemitism in the service of a rightwing political project. In yet another New York Times ad, several former heads of leading Jewish advocacy groups, including conservative ones like Aipac and Hillel International, criticised US Jewish groups that 'have been far too silent about the stunning assault on democratic norms and the rule of law' under Trump. 'The repression has been growing, but so has the resistance,' said Marianne Hirsch, a retired literature professor at Columbia University, who researches memory and the Holocaust and is outspoken against efforts to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. 'I'm seeing a really cross-generational, Jewish faculty, student, and community mobilisation against this narrative.' Jewish Americans' views on Israel, the war in Gaza, antisemitism on campuses and the Trump administration's actions are far more complex than mainstream political discourse may suggest. A recent poll by the Jewish Voters Resource Center found that a majority of Jewish Americans are concerned about antisemitism and say they are 'emotionally attached' to Israel, although older respondents poll much higher on both questions than younger ones. But the survey also found that 64% disapprove of Trump's policies to purportedly combat antisemitism, and 61% believe arresting and deporting pro-Palestinian protesters contribute to increased antisemitism. A rightwing Israeli thinktank found last year that one-third of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. While large numbers of Jewish students point to feelings of ostracization on campus in the last year and a half, their views on the campus protests vary widely. A qualitative study of the experiences of Jewish students, published this month, criticizes representations of campus life that 'compartmentalize students into either/or categories, diminishing nuances between them'. The authors point to 'a need for nuanced discussions about Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish identity that respect generational differences and diverse perspectives'. But tackling complex questions – for instance, about when anti-Zionism veers into antisemitism – has become difficult in an increasingly repressive climate. 'It is making it impossible to have discussions in the classroom,' said Joel Swanson, a Jewish studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Swanson noted that many Jewish Americans are now mobilising against precisely the kind of repression their ancestors came to the US to escape. 'The very liberal principles that have enabled Jewish thriving in the United States are being chipped away at systematically, one by one,' he said. Many of those who identify as anti-Zionist have found a home under the umbrella of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-Palestinian Jewish group whose membership has doubled since the war started – to 32,000 dues-paying members – and whose student chapters were banned from several campuses during last year's protests. In Baltimore, earlier this month, members of the group's dozens of chapters gathered for a national convening. Over four days of workshops at the heavily secured event, participants talked about organising from campuses to religious spaces to promote a 'Judaism beyond Zionism', as the conference tagline read, as well as address authoritarianism in the US. As US universities have become political battlefields, much Jewish organising is happening on campuses and academic spaces. Responding to what they view as a crisis in their scholarly field precipitated by Israel's atrocities in Gaza, Hirsch, the Columbia scholar and others have launched a multidisciplinary Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, a group of mostly Jewish academics invoking their expertise to advocate against universities capitulating to authoritarianism. Jewish faculty and students have also organised in defense of pro-Palestinian students detained by the Trump administration. Following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained for nearly three months with no charges, more than 3,400 Jewish faculty across the country signed a letter to denounce 'without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name – and cynical claims of antisemitism – to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities'. Several Jewish students and faculty wrote letters to the court in support of Khalil. And Jewish groups and synagogues filed a court briefing in support of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Tufts University student who was detained over an op-ed critical of Israel and released earlier this month as her case continues. 'Jewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations,' they wrote. 'Yet the images of Ozturk's arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of [our] members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.' Faculty and students have also denounced congressional hearings against antisemitism on campuses that they say misrepresent their experiences and exclude their perspectives. As their president prepared to face legislators for a fresh round of antisemitism hearings in Congress this month, Jewish faculty and students at Haverford College issued a statement saying that their voices 'have absolutely not been represented in the current public discussion of antisemitism' and questioning the credibility of mostly non-Jewish, Republican legislators leading the battle over antisemitism on campuses. Earlier this month, a group of Jewish students from Columbia University visited Congress to talk to legislators about their participation in campus protests that politicians paint as antisemitic, bringing their views 'to lawmakers who are almost never hearing from that specific perspective', said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace's action group, who accompanied the group. As the Trump administration has sought to justify its repressive measures in their names, many American Jews have found themselves invoking their Jewishness in a public way for the first time. 'We've been criticising identity politics and the way everything gets siloed into identities, and suddenly we find ourselves saying 'as Jewish faculty' or 'as the daughter of Holocaust survivors',' said Hirsch. 'I've always tried to steer clear of having a public Jewish identity. I never felt like I had to advertise it,' echoed Joshua Moses, an anthropology professor at Haverford College. 'But this moment kind of demands it.'
The Guardian
31-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Jewish organizers are increasingly confronting Trump: ‘The repression is growing, but so is the resistance'
On the morning of Columbia University's commencement last week, an intergenerational group of Jewish alumni gathered in the rain outside the Manhattan campus's heavily policed gates, wearing keffiyehs and shirts emblazoned with the words 'not in our name'. Two had graduated more than 60 years earlier, and one spoke of having fled the Nazis to the US as a child. Others recalled participating in Columbia protests of the past, including those that led the university to divest from apartheid South Africa. They spoke as alumni and as Jews to condemn the university's investments in Israel, its repression of pro-Palestinian speech, and its capitulation to the Trump administration's assault on academic freedom in the name of fighting antisemitism on campus. They had planned to burn their Columbia diplomas in protest, but the rain got in their way, so many ripped them to pieces instead. 'As a Jewish person, I'm really appalled at the idea that they are trying to make it sound as if opposing genocide is somehow antisemitic,' said Josh Dubnau, a professor at Stony Brook University who received a PhD from Columbia in 1995 and led the protest. 'There are thousands of us who don't believe in the right of the Jewish people to ethnically cleanse Palestine. There were Jews thousands of years before Zionism, and there will be Jews when Zionism is in the dustbin of history.' Another alumnus, who graduated last year after being suspended over her participation in campus protests, wore a graduation gown and carried the photo of one of nearly 15,000 Palestinian students killed in Gaza during the current war. 'We have a particular duty to show up as Jews because we are not being actively targeted in the way that Palestinian students, Muslim students and Arab students are,' said the student, who asked to remain anonymous. 'It's our duty to weaponise our privilege as Jewish students.' New York police arrested her along with another protester after they set their Columbia diplomas on fire. Nineteen months into Israel's war in Gaza and the US protest movement it prompted, allegations of antisemitism on campuses have become one of the primary pretexts for the Trump administration's multipronged attack on higher education, including billions in funding cuts, demands universities submit to a string of measures curtailing their academic freedom, and the detention and attempted deportation of international students who expressed pro-Palestinian views. But increasingly, Jewish students, faculty and alumni are pushing back against the exploitation of antisemitism charges to justify repressive policies they say do not represent their Jewish values. They have written letters, led protests, lobbied legislators and denounced what they say is the systematic exclusion of Jewish perspectives that are critical of Israel from the national conversation over antisemitism. Jewish Americans – some identifying as 'anti-Zionists', others with a range of views about Israel – have been at the forefront of the movement against the war in Gaza. Last summer, some 200 people, almost all Jewish, were arrested at a protest on Capitol Hill a day before a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this year, more than 350 rabbis, along with more Jewish creatives and activists, signed a New York Times ad denouncing Trump's proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But Jewish-led organising has broadened in recent months. As Jewish Americans continue to protest the war, they are also taking on Trump's onslaught against higher education in the name of Jewish safety, rallying around detained students and condemning what they view as the exploitation of antisemitism in the service of a rightwing political project. In yet another New York Times ad, several former heads of leading Jewish advocacy groups, including conservative ones like Aipac and Hillel International, criticised US Jewish groups that 'have been far too silent about the stunning assault on democratic norms and the rule of law' under Trump. 'The repression has been growing, but so has the resistance,' said Marianne Hirsch, a retired literature professor at Columbia University, who researches memory and the Holocaust and is outspoken against efforts to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. 'I'm seeing a really cross-generational, Jewish faculty, student, and community mobilisation against this narrative.' Jewish Americans' views on Israel, the war in Gaza, antisemitism on campuses and the Trump administration's actions are far more complex than mainstream political discourse may suggest. A recent poll by the Jewish Voters Resource Center found that a majority of Jewish Americans are concerned about antisemitism and say they are 'emotionally attached' to Israel, although older respondents poll much higher on both questions than younger ones. But the survey also found that 64% disapprove of Trump's policies to purportedly combat antisemitism, and 61% believe arresting and deporting pro-Palestinian protesters contribute to increased antisemitism. A rightwing Israeli thinktank found last year that one-third of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. While large numbers of Jewish students point to feelings of ostracization on campus in the last year and a half, their views on the campus protests vary widely. A qualitative study of the experiences of Jewish students, published this month, criticizes representations of campus life that 'compartmentalize students into either/or categories, diminishing nuances between them'. The authors point to 'a need for nuanced discussions about Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish identity that respect generational differences and diverse perspectives'. But tackling complex questions – for instance, about when anti-Zionism veers into antisemitism – has become difficult in an increasingly repressive climate. 'It is making it impossible to have discussions in the classroom,' said Joel Swanson, a Jewish studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Swanson noted that many Jewish Americans are now mobilising against precisely the kind of repression their ancestors came to the US to escape. 'The very liberal principles that have enabled Jewish thriving in the United States are being chipped away at systematically, one by one,' he said. Many of those who identify as anti-Zionist have found a home under the umbrella of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-Palestinian Jewish group whose membership has doubled since the war started – to 32,000 dues-paying members – and whose student chapters were banned from several campuses during last year's protests. In Baltimore, earlier this month, members of the group's dozens of chapters gathered for a national convening. Over four days of workshops at the heavily secured event, participants talked about organising from campuses to religious spaces to promote a 'Judaism beyond Zionism', as the conference tagline read, as well as address authoritarianism in the US. As US universities have become political battlefields, much Jewish organising is happening on campuses and academic spaces. Responding to what they view as a crisis in their scholarly field precipitated by Israel's atrocities in Gaza, Hirsch, the Columbia scholar, and others have launched a multidisciplinary Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, a group of mostly Jewish academics invoking their expertise to advocate against universities capitulating to authoritarianism. Jewish faculty and students have also organised in defense of pro-Palestinian students detained by the Trump administration. Following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained for nearly three months with no charges, more than 3,400 Jewish faculty across the country signed a letter to denounce 'without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name – and cynical claims of antisemitism – to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities'. Several Jewish students and faculty wrote letters to the court in support of Khalil. And Jewish groups and synagogues filed a court briefing in support of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Tufts University student who was detained over an op-ed critical of Israel and released earlier this month as her case continues. 'Jewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations,' they wrote. 'Yet the images of Ozturk's arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of [our] members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.' Faculty and students have also denounced congressional hearings against antisemitism on campuses that they say misrepresent their experiences and exclude their perspectives. As their president prepared to face legislators for a fresh round of antisemitism hearings in Congress this month, Jewish faculty and students at Haverford College issued a statement saying that their voices 'have absolutely not been represented in the current public discussion of antisemitism' and questioning the credibility of mostly non-Jewish, Republican legislators leading the battle over antisemitism on campuses. Earlier this month, a group of Jewish students from Columbia University visited Congress to talk to legislators about their participation in campus protests that politicians paint as antisemitic, bringing their views 'to lawmakers who are almost never hearing from that specific perspective', said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace's action group, who accompanied the group. As the Trump administration has sought to justify its repressive measures in their names, many American Jews have found themselves invoking their Jewishness in a public way for the first time. 'We've been criticising identity politics and the way everything gets siloed into identities, and suddenly we find ourselves saying 'as Jewish faculty' or 'as the daughter of Holocaust survivors',' said Hirsch. 'I've always tried to steer clear of having a public Jewish identity. I never felt like I had to advertise it,' echoed Joshua Moses, an anthropology professor at Haverford. 'But this moment kind of demands it.'
