Editor's Note on Eliot and anti-Semitism: the Ongoing Debate II

The January (2003) issue of Modernism/Modernity included a special section, "Eliot and anti-Semitism: the Ongoing Debate," featuring Ronald Schuchard's essay, "Burbank with a Baedeker, Eliot with a Cigar," in which he argued that the correspondence between T.S. Eliot and Horace Kallen—a Zionist and philosophy professor at the New School—contained evidence vindicating Eliot of the charge of anti-Semitism. Followed by responses from several distinguished critics, this section largely debated whether or not evidence supplied by the Eliot-Kallen correspondence exonerated Eliot of the charge.

In the following short-essay/responses, modernist scholars extend the debate beyond the question of whether or not Eliot was anti-Semitic to consider how the (widely debated) relation of Eliot to Semitism foregrounds aspects of modernism, literary history, and Jewish intellectual history, including reflections on the current situation in Israel.