Invitation to public seminar ‘Antisemitism at work in Austria’ on June 7th 2018 at WU Vienna (Room AD 1) organized by Institute for Human Resource Management and Interdisciplinary Institute for Management and Organisational Behaviour (Department of Management)

Recent developments show that anti-Semitism is never far off the societal agenda in Austria. That anti-Semitism should be an issue at all is rather perplexing. The Jewish community in Austria is estimated to constitute 0.001 of the country’s total population; that means that the absolute majority of Austrians have never seen a Jew in their life. Nevertheless, anti-Jewish attitudes are rife, as various opinion surveys testify to and occasional glitches on social media, such as those of Vienna University students or Rapid Vienna football fans last year, verify. By and large though, anti-Semitic manifestations are largely underground, since these are outlawed, hence the deployment of ‘anti-Jewish speech code’ has mushroomed, and Austria has become known as a situ for “anti-Semitism without anti-Semites” (decoding this parlance, in turn, helped launch critical discourse studies as an academic area in which Austria excels).

In this public event Anti-Semitism in Austria at Work we wish to understand how anti-Semitism manifests itself in the workplace in Austria today, in attitudes and expressed behavior; the way it interacts with organizational culture and the wider environment - the extent to which it is a contemporary phenomenon and/or an extension of the virile anti-Semitism of the not-too-distant past, which characterized public life in Austria; if and how it affects its potential victims and perpetrators; and how it can be addressed and fought against. We view anti-Semitism both as uniquely Austrian as well as a universal phenomenon, and as such we wish to problematize relatedness to the ‘other’ as a core societal issue of our times.

We are honoured to host the Chief Rabbi of Vienna Mr. Arie Folger, MBA as keynote speaker, followed by a discussion and Questions & Answers with Rabbi Folger, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Mayrhofer and Prof. Dr. Yochanan Altman. The event will start on June 7th at 18.30 in Room AD1 (Administrative Building, Room 1). You are cordially invited. A Kosher buffet will be served at the conclusion of the event.

If you like to attend please send an e-mail to Petra.Peck@wu.ac.at .