Yfat Barak-Cheney
Director, International Affairs and Human Rights
Glen Ridge
Biography
Yfat Barak-Cheney is the WJC's Director of International Affairs and Human Rights.
Yfat earned an LL.M in International Legal Studies from New York University where she was a Transitional Justice Scholar and an International Law and Human Rights Fellow. She also holds an LL.M (with honors) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also received her L.L.B and a B.A in International Relations. Yfat clerked with the International Law Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. She also spent a year as a fellow with the criminal justice department of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in New York and several months with the ICTJ Bogotá office. She previously worked with the Ministry of Justice Unit for Combating Human Trafficking and in several NGO's. Yfat is a co-founder of ALMA - Association for the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law in Israel. She is an International Law instructor for the American Red Cross and a pro-bono attorney for immigration and asylum cases. She is a member of the New York Bar and the Israeli Bar Association.
Yfat earned an LL.M in International Legal Studies from New York University where she was a Transitional Justice Scholar and an International Law and Human Rights Fellow. She also holds an LL.M (with honors) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also received her L.L.B and a B.A in International Relations. Yfat clerked with the International Law Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. She also spent a year as a fellow with the criminal justice department of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in New York and several months with the ICTJ Bogotá office. She previously worked with the Ministry of Justice Unit for Combating Human Trafficking and in several NGO's. Yfat is a co-founder of ALMA - Association for the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law in Israel. She is an International Law instructor for the American Red Cross and a pro-bono attorney for immigration and asylum cases. She is a member of the New York Bar and the Israeli Bar Association.
Organisation
World Jewish Congress
dInternational Jewish organisation
The World Jewish Congress is the international organization that represents Jewish communities and organizations in 100 countries around the world. It advocates on their behalf towards governments, parliaments, international organizations and other faiths. The WJC represents the plurality of the Jewish people, and is politically non-partisan.
Matthias J. Becker
Lead "Decoding Antisemitism" research project
Berlin
Biography
Matthias is a linguist, with a strong focus on pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, (critical) discourse and media studies, research on prejudice and nationalism, as well as on internet/social media studies.
At Freie Universität Berlin, he read linguistics, philosophy and literature, and has worked in several research projects on the use of language in political and media campaigns. His doctoral dissertation, published with Nomos in 2018, analyses the linguistic construction of national pride, antisemitic stereotypes and demonising historical analogies in British and German discourses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An English version of the book (with the title "Antisemitism in Reader Comments: Analogies for Reckoning with the Past") was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.
Since 2019, Matthias is a postdoc researcher at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at Technische Universität in Berlin. Furthermore, he is affiliated to CENTRIC (Sheffield Hallam University) and to the Vidal Sassoon Center at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In his postdoc project, he examines various forms of antisemitic and racist hate speech on British news websites in the context of Brexit. Next to antisemitism, he conducted studies on the concept of national racism and antiziganism.
A consistent link between all his research activities is the question of how implicit hate speech - apparently accepted within various milieus of the political mainstream - is constructed and what conditions its production is subject to.
At Freie Universität Berlin, he read linguistics, philosophy and literature, and has worked in several research projects on the use of language in political and media campaigns. His doctoral dissertation, published with Nomos in 2018, analyses the linguistic construction of national pride, antisemitic stereotypes and demonising historical analogies in British and German discourses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An English version of the book (with the title "Antisemitism in Reader Comments: Analogies for Reckoning with the Past") was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.
Since 2019, Matthias is a postdoc researcher at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at Technische Universität in Berlin. Furthermore, he is affiliated to CENTRIC (Sheffield Hallam University) and to the Vidal Sassoon Center at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In his postdoc project, he examines various forms of antisemitic and racist hate speech on British news websites in the context of Brexit. Next to antisemitism, he conducted studies on the concept of national racism and antiziganism.
A consistent link between all his research activities is the question of how implicit hate speech - apparently accepted within various milieus of the political mainstream - is constructed and what conditions its production is subject to.
Organisation
TU Berlin
aAcademic
Since 2021, the pilot project "Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online" (DA) has analysed the content and linguistic structure of thousands of antisemitic comments posted on social media and newspaper comment threads. Initially concentrating on the UK, Germany and France, the project will extend to other language communities in the future. Using the results of an innovative mode of qualitative corpus analysis as a guide, the project is now developing AI language models capable of recognising explicit and implicit forms of antisemitism. The twin-track methodology of this project, combining social science and humanities research with cutting-edge data and computer science, holds considerable promise for other forms of hate speech beyond antisemitism. It is with this potential in mind that the project is holding a symposium on how technology and academic research can work together to recognise, track and combat hate speech and social radicalisation.
Karel Berkhoff
Scientific Coordinator EHRI-3
Amsterdam
Biography
Historian of Eastern Europe and the Holocaust, specialized in Ukraine
MA Harvard University (1992); PhD in History, University of Toronto (1998)
Selected publication: Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Harvard University Press, 2004)
Senior Researcher, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam
Scientific coordinator/Co-director EHRI, 2019-present
Organisation
European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
nOther
The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, a succession of programs funded by the EC since 2010, has as its mission trans-national Holocaust research, commemoration and education. EHRI's main challenge is the wide dispersal of sources and expertise across many institutions. EHRI overcomes such fragmentation by connecting sources, institutions and people. The EHRI Portal enables online access to information about Holocaust sources; EHRI's fellowships give researchers access to the resources of the world's twenty leading Holocaust archives; and EHRI's networking and training brings people together. EHRI also promotes innovative tools advancing the digital transformation of Holocaust research.