On Sunday 25 August Keith Kahn-Harris will speak at JW3 about his latest, much praised and extremely timely book, Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity. His interlocutor is another past speaker at Meretz UK, the analyst and social entrepreneur Osama Filali Naji.
Dr Kahn-Harris is a prolific author, sociologist, commentator and analyst of current affairs. Strange Hate (Repeater Books) has received positive reviews and recently Tablet online magazine published an excerpt under the title The Normal Antisemite.
He is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College, the academic mainstay of British Reform Judaism; an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London; and an authority on heavy metal music. In his informative website Keith describes himself as ‘professionally curious, communally engaged… I like to hear people’s stories’.
Keith’s past books include Uncivil War: The Israel Conflict in the Jewish Community, David Paul Books, 2014; All that Matters: Judaism, Hodder Education, 2012; Despatches from the Invisible Revolution (edited with Dougald Hine), New Public Thinking, 2012; Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today (co-written with Ben Gidley), Continuum 2010; Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, Berg 2007; After subculture: Critical studies in contemporary youth culture (2004); and Denial: The Unspeakable Truth (forthcoming, November 2018 from Notting Hill Editions)
Keith has also written in The Guardian about anti-racism and antisemitism, especially in the British Labour Party; and has commented online about relations between Islamophobia and antisemitism. In addition he has contributed numerous thought pieces to the respected progressive US Jewish daily The Forward and to openDemocracy. Scholarly journals for which he has written include Sociology, Sociological Research Online, Journal of Contemporary Religion, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Popular Music History.
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