About the author
Author and political scientist Matthias Küntzel, born in 1955, holds a tenured part-time position as a teacher of political science at a technical college in Hamburg, Germany.
In 2011, Matthias Küntzel was presented with the Anti-Defamation-League (ADL) Paul Ehrlich-Günther K. Schwerin Human Rights Award during the League’s National Executive Committee meeting in Palm Beach, Florida. “Matthias Küntzel has a long and distinguished record in speaking out against anti-Semitism and warning his readers in his native Germany and elsewhere about the dangers posed by this age-old virus that has no known cure,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, in presenting the award. “His work has been sorely under-appreciated in this country. With this recognition, we hope to acknowledge his ongoing efforts and also let the American public know of the implications of this disturbing trend.”
Küntzel is an external research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Board of Directors of the German chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).
Since 2001, his research and writing has focused on: Antisemitism in current Islamic thinking, Islamism, Islamism and National Socialism, Iran, and German and European policies towards the Middle East and Iran.
His essays and articles have been translated into ten languages and published inter alia in The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Telos, Policy Review, The Jerusalem Post, Standard, Spiegel, Die Zeit and Internationale Politik.
In 2011, he spoke at the international scholars Conference on Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives, organized by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University (founded and directed by Alvin Rosenfeld) and was awarded with the ADL’s Ehrlich-Schwerin Human Rights Prize.
In 2010 he became a regular guest commentator on Germany’s main public radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur and addressed the Second Conference of the Interparliamentary Coalition on Combating Antisemitism (ICCA) in Ottawa, Canada.
In 2009, he spoke at the “London Conference on Combating Antisemitism”, organized by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and published his most recent book, The Germans and Iran. The Past and Present of a Fateful Friendship (German publisher: Wolf Jobst Siedler, Berlin). He presented this book to the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv university and participated in the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism at Jerusalem.
In 2008, his book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 won the Gold Award for Religion at the 12th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards in Los Angeles. He presented Jihad and Jew-Hatred in the USA at numerous universities (Stanford University, Columbia University, University of California in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and Irvine, Buffalo University, University of Maine at Augusta, Cooper Union New York) and delivered lectures at conferences organized inter alia by the American Enterprise Institute, The Israel Project, The Anti-Defamation League and The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. He also gave a talk at the “Global Forum For Combating Antisemitism” at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem and participated in an international academic workshop on “Antisemitism in the 21st Century: Manifestations, Implications and Consequences”, organized by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
In 2007, Telos Press (New York, NY) published his book Jihad and Jew-Hatred which was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2007 London Book Festival. He gave talks at the European Parliament as well as in Vienna, London and Berlin about trade relations between Europe and Iran. He was a speaker at the Oxford Union Society and made headlines when his planned lecture about Islamic Antisemitism was abruptly cancelled by Leeds University in March 2007 because some Muslim students complained about the topic. After a wave of protests he was re-invited by the University in October 2007.
In 2006, he lectured on Islamic antisemitism at Yale University, Penn State University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and became a member of the Board of Directors of the American association Scholars For Peace In The Middle East.
In 2005, he discovered antisemitic tracts at the Iranian stands at the Frankfurt Book fair – an incident he wrote about in the Wall Street Journal.
In 2004, he was appointed a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In 2003, he delivered the Keynote Address at the Conference on “Genocide and Terrorism – Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator” at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
In 2002 his book Djihad und Judenhass: Über den neuen antijüdischen Krieg was published in German. In 2007, it was translated into English and Hebrew (Koren, Jerusalem). In 2009, it was translated into French (L’Oeuvre d’Editions, Paris).
From 1984 to 1988, Matthias Küntzel was a senior advisor to the Federal Parliamentary Group of the German Green Party.
In 1991, he was awarded a Doctorate, cum summa laude, in Political Science at the University of Hamburg. His thesis was published in German (Bonn und die Bombe. Deutsche Atomwaffenpolitik von Adenauer bis Brandt, Frankfurt, Campus, 1992) and English (Bonn and the Bomb. German Politics and the Nuclear Option, London, Pluto Press, 1995).
In 1997, he was co-author of a book about the reaction of the German political Left to Daniel J. Goldhagen’s famous study “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” entitled, Goldhagen und die deutsche Linke oder: Die Gegenwart des Holocaust (Goldhagen and the German Left or: The Presence of the Holocaust), Berlin, Elefanten Press.
In 1999, he organized the conference Die Goldhagen-Debatte: Bilanz und Perspektiven (“The Goldhagen debate: results and perspectives”) of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, Germany, with Daniel J. Goldhagen, Andrei Markovits et al. in Potsdam, Germany.
In 2000, he published a study on the causes and meaning of the Kosovo War: Der Weg in den Krieg. Deutschland, die Nato und das Kosovo (“The Road to War. Germany, Nato and Kosovo”), Berlin, Elefanten Press. Between 1988 and 2001 he was a contributor to the German monthly konkret.
Please contact the author at MatKuentzel@aol.com.