The Frankfurt School avoided studying anti-Semitism partly to protect its Jewish members.

Evidence

Strikingly absent in this section, as in the Studien as a whole, was a study of anti-Semitism and its relation to authoritarianism. This was perhaps a reflection of the Institut’s general minimization of the Jewish problem, which has been noted earlier. Pollock, when questioned about it, replied “one didn’t want to advertise that.” 11 It perhaps also corresponded to the Institut’s unwillingness to draw unnecessary attention to the overwhelmingly Jewish origins of its members. Whatever the cause, the neglect was not long-lived. In 1939 Horkheimer published an essay on “The Jews and Europe,” 79 one of his most despairing, and the Institut began to draw up plans for a major study of anti-Semitism. Although never completed as initially conceived, this plan served as a forerunner of the “Studies in Prejudice” directed in part by the Institut in the forties, several of which dealt with the problem of anti-Semitism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 432

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the Institut’s Jewish origins shape other silences in its work beyond the Studien?
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader familiarity with Frankfurt School institutional politics and the later Studies in Prejudice series. — connects to: The Frankfurt School ignored Jewish identity despite Rathenau’s assassination — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 163; Academic sociology has structurally avoided engaging the Holocaust as a disciplinary challenge. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 64; Anti-antisemitic thinkers conspicuously avoided invoking any predecessors — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 1200

Broader Connections

• Academic sociology has structurally avoided engaging the Holocaust as a disciplinary challenge. #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 64
• Anti-antisemitic thinkers conspicuously avoided invoking any predecessors #exemplifies (0.72) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1200