The March 2025 “Not In Our Name” petition was the largest Jewish faculty petition ever recorded, with 3,400 signatures from Jewish professors, staff and students. How did it happen that the jewel in the keter of American Jewish academic life became a weapon against American Jews and Israel? Jewish Studies is one of the “field studies” departments, like African American Studies and Women’s Studies, that came into existence as identity politics took root on the campus in 1968. We shouldn’t confuse Jewish Studies with its precursor, the historic study of the Bible and Hebrew philology and philosophy in American universities. The younger cohort joked bitterly that Jewish Studies was like all the other field studies, only with a generational delay.