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My university wants me to sign a loyalty oath — am I in America or Vichy France?
As a historian of modern France, I have rarely seen a connection between my everyday life in my adopted state of Texas and my work on my adopted specialization: the period we call Vichy France. Apart from the Texan boast that the Lone Star Republic is bigger than the French Republic, and the small town of Paris, Texas, which boasts its own Eiffel Tower, I had no reason to compare the two places where I have spent more than half of my life.
Until now.
Last week, professors and instructors at the University of Houston received an unsettling memo from the administration, which asked us to sign a statement that we teach rather than “indoctrinate” our students.
Though the administration did not define “indoctrinate,” it hardly takes a PhD in English to read between the lines. Indoctrination is precisely what our state government has already forbidden us from doing in our classes. There must not be the slightest sign in our courses and curricula of references to diversity, identity and inclusion. The catch-all word used is “ideology,” a term Governor Greg Abbott recently invoked when he warned that “Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation. We must end indoctrination.”
This is not the first time in the past several months that I have been reminded of what occurred in France during the four years that it was ruled by its German occupiers and Vichy collaborators.
Very briefly, with Germany’s rapid and complete defeat of France in 1940, an authoritarian, antisemitic and collaborationist regime assumed power. Among its first acts was to purge French Jews from all the professions, including high school and university faculties, and to impose an “oath of loyalty” to the person of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the elderly but ramrod straight and clear-headed hero of World War I.
The purpose of the oath was simple and straightforward: By demanding the fealty of all state employees to the person of Pétain, it also demanded their hostility to the secular and democratic values of the French republican tradition. Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of teachers signed the oath —even the novelist and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, who needed her salary as a lycée teacher, as did the writer Jean Guéhenno, a visceral anti-Pétainist who continued to teach at the prestigious Paris lycée Henri IV until he was fired in 1943.
Vichy’s ministers of education understood the vital importance that schools and universities played in shaping citizens. Determined to replace the revolutionary values of liberty, equality and fraternity with the reactionary goals of family, work and homeland, they sought to eliminate “godless schools” and instill a “moral order” based on submission to state and church authorities. This radical experiment, powered by a reactionary ideology, to return France to the golden age of kings, cardinals and social castes came to an inglorious end with the Allied liberation of the country and collapse of Vichy scarcely four years after it had begun.
The French Jewish historian Marc Bloch — who joined the Resistance and sacrificed his life on behalf of a very different ideology we can call humanism — always insisted on the importance of comparative history. But comparison was important not because it identified similarities but because it illuminated differences. Clearly, the situation of professors at UH is very different from that of their French peers in Vichy France. We are not risking our jobs, much less our lives, by resisting this ham-handed effort to demand our loyalty to an anti-indoctrination memo.
But the two situations are not entirely dissimilar, either. Historians of fascism like Robert Paxton remind us that such movements begin slowly, then suddenly assume terrifying proportions. This was certainly the case in interwar France, where highly polarized politics, frequent political violence and a long history of antisemitism and anti-republicanism prepared the ground for Vichy. In France, Paxton writes, this slow, then sudden transformation “changed the practice of citizenship from the enjoyment of constitutional rights and duties to participation in mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity.”
As an historian of France, I always thought its lurch into authoritarianism was shocking, but not surprising. After all, many of the elements for this change had existed well before 1940. But as a citizen of America, I am not just shocked, but also surprised by official demands for affirmation and conformity. One day I will find the time to think hard about my naiveté. But the time is now to think about how we should respond to these demands.
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Why I’m vibing with the pope’s first big statement
I have long been obsessed with the Vatican and the inner workings of the papacy. (I majored and did my Master’s in religious studies.) But usually other people are not as tickled as I am by analyzing the newest theological statements from the Holy See.
Not this week. Pope Leo XIV just put out his first encyclical — the term used to refer to official statements outlining the church’s stance on a topic — and it has gone viral. “Spitting fire right out the gate,” said one of many similar trending posts, as though the encyclical was a rap song.
The topic is buzzy: AI, which the pope casts as one of the greatest threats to human flourishing and morality. (The encyclical is titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity” in English, if that gives you the gist.) “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur,” it opens, “ is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”
The document notes many of the concrete risks of AI — sexual abuse, distortion of facts, job loss — and calls for pragmatic solutions. But it is, at its heart, a testament to what makes humans human, written with palpable adoration for the people of the world: our creativity, our empathy, even our weaknesses. It’s a declaration that machines can never have the ineffable qualities of God’s children.
Structuring our world around technology, Leo writes, reduces “creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”
Later, in a paean to the importance of deep thought over easy answers, he goes on: “The speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions,” he writes, calling on the world “to protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine” and warning against rendering “human thought seemingly superfluous precisely when it is most needed.”
“Magnificatus Humanitas” is a major statement, both in length — more than 43,000 words — and in symbolism. A pope’s first encyclical indicates the issues they believe are most important to the church, and signals the likely direction of their papacy.
That direction, for Pope Leo, is to be a voice for moral leadership, writ large. He addressed the encyclical not only to Catholics or even Christians, but “to all men and women of goodwill,” and cited thinkers like Hannah Arendt and J.R.R. Tolkien alongside the Bible.
It’s a declaration of a new — or, arguably, very old — relevance for religious leaders. As people rush through our increasingly fast-paced, frantic world, striving to keep up with the newest technology or geopolitical shift affecting markets and jobs, the slow-moving, zoomed-out perspective of religious leaders seems to be more and more important.
The Vatican held massive authority both moral and military for much of Western history. But its sway faded in the modern age. As democracy rose, Christianity broke into factions and religion’s prominence weakened, leaving the Church without the same ability to bestow a divine mandate on nations and rulers.
So many modern popes have kept their sights more narrowly focused on the theological. Even Pope Francis, who was a liberal, modernizing force for the church, and spoke out strongly on topics like the environment and immigration, focused three of his four encyclicals on Christian theological concepts like the Sacred Heart and Christianity as the world’s guiding light.
Pope Leo, however, seems to have found his way to modern, secular relevance by speaking out clearly on major issues of the day. He notes that he drew inspiration for “Magnificatus Humanitas” from Pope Leo XIII, an influential pope in the late 1800s and the inspiration for the modern Leo’s own papal moniker, whose 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” on the economy and conditions of the working class, was criticized for insufficient focus on the Gospel. The current pope’s own document is remarkably concrete and political.
Making political statements isn’t new for Leo, but the encyclical canonizes his boldness into an official form. In the past few months I’ve written about the ways in which Pope Leo has used sermons and statements to directly counter those made by U.S. leaders. After Pete Hegseth made a speech implying the U.S. military is doing God’s will, the pope gave a homily saying that prayers for war cannot be heard by God. He has made strongly worded comments about the rights of immigrants as Trump announced increased ICE raids, and made a point of appointing foreign bishops in American parishes. He has refused to visit the U.S. despite the fact that he is American and has been invited numerous times, including for the nation’s 250th birthday; he is instead planning to visit an island that serves as a refugee landing point in the Mediterranean.
It’s not all that surprising that Leo is making pronouncements on the justness of wars; popes have always given commentary on the world, albeit often less pointedly. Of course, Catholics have always looked to the pope for moral leadership — though that is increasingly under question, as renegade Catholics doubt the pope. (Even J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert with a book coming out about his conversion, has warned the pope to be “careful” with his theological interpretations — a near heretical statement. That’s how Protestantism came about.) The difference today is that everybody is listening.
I think the reason is that there is a certain ineffable quality that can’t be accounted for in so much of modern-day discourse in our metrics-focused world. Everything needs to be provable with a statistical analysis or some quantifiable indicator, or it needs to be as profitable as possible to extract value. But so much of what is most valuable in the human experience is intuitive — experiences and emotions like love, joy, transcendence. Connection with each other. Religious leaders have been honing the language to talk about these qualities for centuries, and they guard one of the only arenas in which the intangible remains central.
Of course, there are also plenty of issues with religious institutions, and the Vatican in particular is famous as a site where abuses of power were hidden and protected. But “Magnifica Humanitas,” and its virality, points toward a new relationship with religion, and a newly important role for it to play.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking, a hope for my own increased importance as a religion reporter.
The post Why I’m vibing with the pope’s first big statement appeared first on The Forward.
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How can I live freely as a Jew in a world where strangers rip my mezuzah off my doorframe?
Twice, the mezuzah on my front door was ripped off.
The first time, I was shocked. The second time, I made a decision that still pains me. I did not put it back up.
This was before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
That is the part I keep coming back to. The fear did not begin after the Hamas attacks. It was already there, intruding with the quiet calculation of whether a small Jewish symbol on my home made me less safe.
A mezuzah is not a political statement. It makes no argument about a government or a war. It is a sacred object, a marker of memory, a tiny declaration that says: Jews live here. I thought about that mezuzah again recently when the Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit showing that antisemitic physical assaults in the United States reached record highs in 2025. That increase reflects something many Jews already feel in daily life: the slow erosion of ease, the daily calculation of whether to speak up or stay quiet — things I have felt since the first time my mezuzah was violently torn off my doorframe.
Since then, the realm in which I feel safe as a visibly Jewish person has been shrinking from all directions.
After the Oct. 7 attack, the bulletin boards in my apartment building began filling with calls to boycott Israel. Campaign flyers for a Jewish political candidate who came to speak there were defaced with Hitler mustaches. I learned to scan the walls before I scanned my mail.
This was not happening on a campus quad or in some distant place. It was happening where I live.
Then, among my mother’s things, I found a Star of David necklace from the 1930s — marcasite set against black onyx, delicate and old. A boyfriend had given it to her when they were both 14.
I put it on in Florida, where I spend much of my time caring for my mother. I loved wearing it. It felt like more than jewelry. It felt like inheritance, memory, and a small way of carrying my family with me.
But when my mother knew I was going back to New York, she told me to take it off.
My mother is 102. She is not easily frightened. She has lived long enough to know when the temperature in the room has changed. She was not making a political argument. She was trying to protect her daughter.
I still wear that Star of David. But I admit I am selective. In New York, there are moments when I leave it visible and moments when I tuck it under my shirt. That calculation itself tells me something about the world I am moving through.
Recently, in a private Facebook group for women essayists, I shared a personal piece I had written for the United Kingdom-based Jewish Chronicle about how Oct. 7 changed life for my mother and me. It was not a political manifesto. It was a reflection on fear, Jewish identity, aging and visibility.
And still, I was attacked by other writers.“What about Gaza?” I was asked. The message was clear: even my personal Jewish pain had to pass a political test before it could be acknowledged.
That is the narrowing.
This ugliness is coming from more than one direction now. It stems from old conspiracy theories on the right and newer moral certainties in some of the progressive spaces where I once felt most at home. Different language brings about the same result: Jews become less human, less particular, less entitled to fear.
That collapse is what frightens me most: the definitional collapse between Jew and Israeli; Israeli and Israel’s government; Jewish symbol and political provocation; mezuzah and target.
As Jews like me reckon with that collapse, we must reckon with how much we’ll go along with it.
Right now, too often, Jews are being asked to choose between our own safety and our compassion for others. We should be able to prioritize both. I am a Zionist. I believe in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland. I also believe Palestinians are human beings who deserve freedom, dignity, and protection from suffering.
These beliefs should not cancel each other out. They should make us more careful, more humane, more committed to truth.
Yet now we must choose between speaking about antisemitism and being accused of indifference to other hatreds. That is no way to live.
Since Oct. 7, I have found myself going to synagogue on Shabbat, something I never did before. I was a High Holiday Jew. Now I seek out rooms where I do not have to explain why this moment feels frightening. I have learned where I feel seen. I have learned who can hold my fear without turning it into an argument.
The mezuzah I did not put back up is small. It fits in the palm of my hand.
But what it represents is not small: memory, faith, survival, home, and the right to be visibly Jewish without fear.
When I did not put it back up, I told myself I was being practical. But now — after Oct. 7, the bulletin boards, my mother’s warning, and the explosive allegations I’ve seen travel through respected media without sufficient care or verification — I understand it differently.
I was not just protecting a doorframe. I was learning to shrink.
The post How can I live freely as a Jew in a world where strangers rip my mezuzah off my doorframe? appeared first on The Forward.
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Podcast: A lively conversation in Yiddish with actress Lea Koenig
ס׳איז לעצטנס אַרויס אַ פּאָדקאַסט מיט דער באַליבטער אַקטריסע אין ישׂראל, ליאַ קעניג, וועלכע איז הײַנט צום בעסטן באַקאַנט ווי די ייִדיש־רעדנדיקע באָבע פֿונעם פּערסאָנאַזש שלום שטיסל אין דער ישׂראלדיקער טעלעוויזיע־סעריע „שטיסל“.
אינעם שמועס באַטייליקן זיך אויך יניבֿ גאָלדבערג — דער מחבר פֿון אַ נײַער ביאָגראַפֿיע וועגן איר אויף ענגליש; דער איבערזעצער און דראַמאַטורג מיכל יאַשינסקי, און דער ייִדישער זינגער און קולטור־טוער חיים וואָלף. דעם פּאָדקאַסט האָט טראַנסמיטירט די באָסטאָנער ראַדיאָ־פּראָגראַם „דאָס ייִדישע קול“.
ליאַ קעניג גיט איבער אירע זכרונות במשך פֿון איר לאַנגער קאַריערע אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, ווי אויך אינעם העברעיִשן טעאַטער, טעלעוויזיע און קינאָ. כּדי צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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