Laurel Leff is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. She is the author of Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper and Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-and-Death Decisions on Hiring Scholars from Nazi Europe, to be published in Fall 2019
‘I beg you very much to help me if possible to emigrate very soon’: The wrenching appeals of Jewish scholars under Nazi rule – and how the American academy’s anti-Semitism, sexism and apathy condemned them to death
Americans who protested Nazism too loudly, including Americans Jews, were criticized for their 'discourtesy': our fear of incivility appeased Nazism. We can't go there again
Nazi and fascist American groups, whose rhetoric is echoed by those marching in Charlottesville, allowed nervous politicians to believe they were enough of a force that xenophobia-riddled policies prevailed