SAPIR Journal

02/07/2025

This Thursday, July 3 at 1:00 PM ET, join Iranian dissident and entrepreneur Mehdi Yahyanejad and author Roya Hakakian for “Views from the Iranian Diaspora,” a conversation moderated by SAPIR Institute Director Chanan Weissman. Register now.

Twelve days of war between Israel and Iran sparked passionate debates about the future of the Islamic Republic. How did Israel’s strikes impact the stability of the regime? What are the implications of the war on Iranian dissidents, opposition figures, and everyday Iranian citizens? And what does ...

18/06/2025

To make sense of the current Israel-Iran war, join us for a SAPIR virtual conversation this Friday, June 20 at 1:00 PM ET, featuring former Commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command Lieutenant General Joseph Guastella and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Dana Stroul moderated by SAPIR Institute Director, Chanan Weissman. Register at

On Friday, June 13th, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, targeting nuclear sites, drones and rocket launchers, and senior Iranian military leadership. In response, Iran has deployed hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones that led to many civilian deaths and destruction of property on the Isra...

27/05/2025

Earlier this month, Bret Stephens moderated the inaugural SAPIR Debate at 92NY, a discussion with Rahm Emanuel and Jason Greenblatt on the question “Is Donald Trump Good for the Jews?” Watch it now.

In American Jewish life, few questions are as fraught — or as revealing — as this one: Is Donald Trump good for the Jews? In this launch of the SAPIR Debates...

23/05/2025

“Some books improve with time. Others, written long ago, seem almost clairvoyant, as if they somehow projected themselves into our modern moment,” writes Jesse Tisch of Ben Hecht’s “A Guide for the Bedevilled.” What prescient insights does Hecht’s uncompromising approach in the face of antisemitism hold for today’s Jewish activists?

Some books improve with time. Others, written long ago, seem almost clairvoyant, as if they somehow projected themselves into our modern...

23/05/2025

Could students’ appetite for defiant activism be the product of a messy web of psychological factors? Psychotherapist Malka Shaw lays out why activism appeals to young adults, and why the flimsy responses of many university administrators invited escalating attacks on campus over the past year.

If there was a moment of levity during the student takeover of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall last year, it came unwittingly, when J...

22/05/2025

While American Jews often consider their support for the civil rights movement as the golden age of modern Jewish activism, author and professor Maxim D. Shrayer draws lessons from a different history, one in which Jews were at the true center of a movement: Soviet refuseniks.

In the early 1980s, a poignant hangman’s joke entered unsanctioned Soviet culture. When one telephoned the notorious Office of Visas and ...

22/05/2025

With the help of activist entrepreneurs like Mehdi Yahyanejad, the Iranian people’s battle for democracy has taken on new dimensions since the rise of the internet and online news. Where does he see the movement heading?

For Sapir’s Activism issue, Editor-in-Chief Bret Stephens sat down for an interview with Iranian-American entrepreneur and activist Mehdi...

22/05/2025

We are devastated at the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram, devoted employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. SAPIR extends its deepest condolences to their families, friends, embassy colleagues, and the D.C. Jewish community. SAPIR's current issue on Activism takes a deep look at the hate embedded inside anti-Israel activism and the danger it poses. The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, was filmed shouting "Free, free Palestine" after being taking into custody, a scene we have witnessed countless times at many anti-Israel protests in recent years.

21/05/2025

Faced with a crisis after October 7, Brown’s ranks of Jewish alumni stepped in to support desperate students. Alumni leader Ellen Ginsberg Simon explains how they developed a five-pronged approach to effect lasting change.

One evening in the shocking and extraordinary October of 2023, I received a text message from an unknown number. The message was simple and...

21/05/2025

Recounting the history of activism that led to the founding of Brown University, President Christina H. Paxson reflects that “today, the word activism has, for many, a far less positive resonance.” She charges colleges and universities with shaping the contours of student activism by providing “opportunities for students to learn about the full range of ways to effect change.”

We live in a country that has long honored activists. The men who fought for a vision of America free of British rule. The women who risked...

20/05/2025

Recent campus policy changes under the Trump administration “are cause for both marvel and caution,” write Baruch Weiss and Mark B. Rotenberg of . The two chart a middle course to navigate rapidly changing dynamics.

On college campuses and beyond, the fight against antisemitism is undergoing a revolution. For the past century, American Jews would protes...