About Me
Pamela Nadell, professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in women’s and Gender History at American University, is a historian specializing in American Jewish history antisemitism. She authored America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, winner of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award’s “Jewish Book of the Year.” Her new book Antisemitism, An American Tradition will be published on October 14, 2025 (W.W. Norton) and was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award.
Nadell also wrote Women Who Would be Rabbis, which was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies, and has consulted for museums, including Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, Pittsburgh’s rebuild of the Tree of Life Congregation, and Tel Aviv’s ANU: The Museum of the Jewish People. A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she lectures widely and teaches courses on antisemitism, the Holocaust, and American Jewish History. She has testified before Congress three times and was the fourth witness in the congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania.
Contact Me
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Pages
- Antisemitism Book
- Books
- Antisemitism, an American Tradition
- America’s Jewish Women
- American Jewish Women’s History
- Conservative Judaism in America
- Making Women’s Histories
- New Essays in American Jewish History
- Women and American Judaism
- Women Who Would be Rabbis
- Three Hundred Fifty Years: An Album of American Jewish Memory
- Events
- Other Writings & News
- Media
- About Me
- Contact Me
Topics
Events
- September 30, 2026, Annual Helen and Daniel Sonenshine Lecture: Sarah Hurwitz and Pamela Nadell, American University, Washington, DC
- October 5, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Book Talk, Michigan State
- October 13, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Book Talk, Towson University
- October 13, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Book Talk, The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore
- October 19, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Book Talk, Yale University
Past Events
- July 29, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Brandeis University Hartman Family Foundation Educators’ Institute on Israel and Antisemitism
- July 8, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center Summer Workshop on Navigating the Holocaust for Educators, Milwaukee
- July 8, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Unpacking American Antisemitism at 250
- June 29, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Brandeis University Frieze Family Summer Institute on Antisemitism in Higher Education
- June 22, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, George Washington University Institute on Antisemitism and Jewish Inclusion in Educational Settings, Washington, DC
News
- Senate Education Panel Hearing to Address ‘Antisemitic Disruptions on Campus’
- Scholars Have Told Important Jewish Stories with the NEH’s Support. What Happens to Them Now?
- Guthrie’s three-act ‘Lehman Trilogy’ charts one immigrant family’s epic rise and catastrophic fall
- Antisemitism Seeing Global Rise
- Pamela Nadell’s History: Professor, Author, Researcher
- Q&A: Antisemitism in America
- How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel
- Hollywood is Failing Jewish-Americans Despite a History Together – Opinion
- The 4th to Testify: Congressional witness Pamela Nadell on the US Antisemitism Crisis
- New Study Highlights Campus Antisemitism ‘Hot Spots’
- What Jewish College Students Have to Say About the Campus Climate
- A Brief History of Antisemitism in U.S. Higher Education
- The Gaza Crisis is Stoking Antisemitism in the U.S.
- Antisemitism on Elon Musk’s X is Surging and Dredging Up Many Ancient, Defamatory Themes of Blaming Jews
January 15, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Book Talk, Brandeis University
/in Past EventsJanuary 8, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Tel Aviv University, Israel
/in Past EventsI will speak and info and date
January 6, 2026 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
/in Past EventsI will speak and info and date
December 31, 2025 Antisemitism, an American Tradition Symposium, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
/in Past EventsI will speak and info and date
“Smokescreen: Antisemitism on campus is real—and the Trump administration is exploiting it”
/in NewsLiberal Education published a piece by Pamela Nadell arguing that antisemitism on campus is a genuine problem, but that the Trump administration has seized on it as a pretext to advance a broader assault on higher education.
Read the full article here: Liberal Education – Smokescreen: Antisemitism on campus is real—and the Trump administration is exploiting it
December 14, 2025 JWI Jewish Women’s Leadership Conference, Marriott Marquis, Washington, DC
/in Past EventsDecember 11, 2025 Antisemitism Past and Present, Capital Jewish Museum, Washington, DC
/in Past EventsDecember 11, 2025. Antisemitism, an American Tradition, at the Capital Jewish Museum. Jews met antisemitism on landing in New Amsterdam in 1654 when Peter Stuyvesant tried to expel them. The founding of the US changed little, as negative European stereotypes rooted into American soil. They faced restrictions on holding office, admission to schools, and employment in industry, while their synagogues and cemeteries were vandalized. Recently, white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virgina, and a gunman killed eleven members at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue building. Antisemitic incidents have increased each year.
Antisemitism, an American Tradition explores the depth of this fraught history. The book reveals how Jews battled antisemitism through the law and by creating organizations to speak for them. Jews would also fight back with their fists or join with allies in fighting all types of hate. This momentous work sounds the alarm on a hatred that continues to plague our country.
December 8, 2025 Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Virtual Book Talk, Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies
/in Past EventsDecember 4, 2025, Antisemitism, an American Tradition, Klass Lecture, University of Southern California, DC Campus
/in Past Events‘The blood libel never went away. Last week it went viral in Washington, DC, it went viral.’
/in NewsJewish Telegraphic Agency published a piece by historian Pamela Nadell tracing the centuries-old “blood libel” — the medieval lie that Jews consume human blood — through its long, often violent history in the U.S. and Europe, and connecting it to a recent guerrilla-art protest outside Washington, D.C.’s Union Station that depicted Israeli and U.S. leaders eating “Gaza’s Spilled Blood.” The piece argues that while the protesters may frame their act as anti-Zionism, its imagery revives a slander that has repeatedly fueled violence against Jewish communities, from 12th-century England to a 1946 pogrom in Poland to a 1928 blood-libel scare in Massena, New York.