The Dreyfus Affair and the Transformation of Jewish Identity

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was falsely accused of selling military secrets to Germany. After a hasty court martial and humiliating degradation ceremony, he was sent to Devil’s Island to serve a brutal life sentence. Over the next twelve years, the Dreyfus Affair transformed French society, leading to an outpouring of antisemitism. The Affair also transformed the nature of Jewish identity, changing how Jews saw their place in the world and their relation to other Jews. This talk explores Jewish reactions to the Affair in different national contexts, with particular attention to the effect of the Affair on Jewish political ideologies. With antisemitism once again on the rise, the Dreyfus Affair has much to teach us about the causes of antisemitic hatred, but also about the ways that antisemitism can be resisted.

Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he chairs the French Department and directs the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Cullman Center Fellowship at the New York Public Library, he is the author of five books, including most recently Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, published by Yale University Press in 2024.

Cosponsors: Department of French & Italian, Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch, Institute for Global Studies, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Department of History, Department of Political Science