Marlene Gallner is currently completing her graduate degree in Austrian Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include varied faces of antisemitism including anti-Zionism, social philosophy and Critical theory. She has worked at the Moshe Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, and has organised a number of conferences and seminars on antisemitism and the aftermath of National Socialism at the University of Vienna and in summer camps in Germany, Austria and Israel.
Our Voice of the Fortnight is from the Times of Israel's 'Wartime Diaries' podcast. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Shai Davidai – an Assistant Professor at Columbia University – became an unlikely public defender of Israel. And truthfully, even he was surprised by this turn of events: As a committed left-wing Israeli, he had spent years criticizing the government, and often took to the streets to demonstrate against its policies. But the atmosphere he witnessed on college campuses (and specifically on his own campus at Columbia), compelled him to speak up and speak out.