Derek Penslar

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and Oxford University, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies. Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern capitalism, nationalism, and colonialism. Penslar’s books include Shylock’s Children: Economics and Modern Identity in Modern Europe (University of California Press, 2001), Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2006), The Origins of the State of Israel: A Documentary History (with Eran Kaplan, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Press, 2013), and Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (Yale University Press, 2020). He is currently writing a book titled Zionism: An Emotional State and is beginning work on a global history of the 1948 Palestine War. Penslar is President of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.