Kara Jesella
Adjunct Fellow

Kara Jesella is a feminist scholar and the author of Feminist Antisemitism: An Intellectual History (Routledge, 2026), a book that tracks how, as different versions of feminism have competed through the decades, a feminism that does not seek mainstream feminist goals, like equal rights or protection from violence, has become predominant, to the detriment of Jews, Jewish women, and Israel. 

 A fellow of the Z3 Institute and the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Jesella has lectured on antisemitism and sexual violence at Harvard University and on the history of feminist antisemitism and antizionism at the ISGAP (the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy) summer institute at the University of Cambridge and many other venues. Her essays have been anthologized in Responses to 7 October: Universities and the forthcoming Necessary Dissent: Essays on Israel, Hamas, and October 7. 

 Jesella has a PhD and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, where she was the Managing Editor of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and a BA in Women’s Studies and English from Vassar College. A former journalist, she has written and edited for the New York Times, Quillette, Tablet, and many other publications, and authored a cultural history of Sassy magazine that was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She lives in New York City.