Abraham Socher is the editor of the Jewish Review of Books, a quarterly publication he founded in 2010 with the support of the Tikvah Fund. The JRB focuses on the newest books and ideas about religion, literature, culture, and politics, as well as fiction, poetry, and the arts. Socher was educated at UCLA, Harvard University and UC Berkeley, where he received a PhD in History. He is the author of The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Philosophy, Heresy (Stanford University Press, 2006), and has published essays and reviews on topics in Jewish intellectual history, literary criticism and baseball. He is a professor at Oberlin College in the Department of Religion and directs the program in Jewish Studies. (Photo: Screenshot.)

David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum distinguished professor of Jewish history and the director of the Jewish Studies program at the University of California, Davis. He has written on the historian Gershom Scholem, as well as on themes of power, sexuality, blood and secularization in Jewish history. In December 2017, Biale published an 800-page volume on the history of Hasidism, written with a team of academic colleagues, with Princeton University Press. “Our underlying argument is that Hasidism is part of modern Jewish history, not just an anti-modern phenomenon," Biale reflected on the book's publication. "It’s an important component of that history, and a shaper of it.” Biale's many books include Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought (2010) and Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (1986). Biale is also the co-author of the volume on Judaism published by the Norton Anthology of World Religions. (Photo: Screenshot.)

Leading Jewish scholar Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University in Montreal and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Professor Troy's writings have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, and other major media outlets. His books include biographies of former President Ronald Reagan and former New York Senator Hillary Clinton. His latest book, The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland – Then, Now, Tomorrow, sheds light on the surprisingly diverse and shared visions for realizing Israel as a democratic Jewish state. Building on Arthur Hertzberg’s classic, The Zionist Idea, Troy explores the backstories, dreams, and legacies of more than 170 passionate Jewish visionaries from the 1800s to today. (Photo: McGill University.)

A professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, Koerner is currently working on the film The Burning Child, which traces the rise of creativity and the forces countering it in early 20th-century Vienna. Koerner's documentary highlights the antisemitism that plagued Viennese intellectual circles, casting Jews and non-Jews in "deadly opposition." Partly inspired by the experience of his father – a Jew who fled Vienna following Austria's incorporation by Nazi Germany in 1938 – Koerner notes that the individuals in his film all believed they would be safe inside their own homes. "All the people I document, including my grandparents, thought the same thing,” Koerner said in a January 2018 interview. (Wikimedia Commons.)

The dean of students at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus in New York, NY, Keith Eldredge has won plaudits from Jewish and non-Jewish students for taking robust action against the anti-Zionist campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In 2016, Eldredge denied SJP club status on the campus, explaining: "I cannot support an organization whose sole purpose is advocating political goals of a specific group, and against a specific country, when these goals clearly conflict with and run contrary to the mission and values of the University." He continued: "Specifically, the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel presents a barrier to open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding.” As a result of his stance, Eldredge continues to be targeted by pro-Palestinian activists, despite his compromise offer of a pro-Palestinian club with a name that does not raise the same “animosity and safety concerns" that SJP does. (Photo: LinkedIn.)

Previously the president of Tufts University and the chancellor of MIT, Lawrence "Larry" Bacow's standing as a leader in American higher education was again recognized when he became president of Harvard University in August 2018. The son of a mother who survived Auschwitz and a father who escaped violent pogroms in Europe for a new life in America, the Pontiac, MI native capped off his own distinguished academic career with a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. An observer of kashrut who keeps a mezuzah on his office door, Bacow remains proud of his Jewish immigrant roots. As he told a press conference announcing his new position at Harvard earlier this year, "I would not be standing here today, literally, if this country had turned its back on my parents." (Photo: PR Newswire.)

A senior lecturer in law at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK and an affiliate professor of law at Haifa University, British-Jewish academic Lesley Klaff is increasingly recognized as one of the world's leading scholars of contemporary antisemitism, frequently speaking at academic conferences in Israel, the US and Europe. In July 2018, Klaff was appointed editor-in-chief the prestigious Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, which provides a forum for current academic research and analysis of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Klaff is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of the Social Research Foundation and also serves on the academic advisory board of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. (Photo: Screenshot.)

Martin Goodman is professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford University and president of the Oxford Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies. He is a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and the British Academy. His Rome and Jerusalem, published in 2008, was acknowledged as a landmark in the study of the Jewish people in the Roman Empire and has been translated into six languages. In 2018, Penguin Books published Goodman's A History of Judaism, a truly global interpretation that spans not only the Middle East, Europe and North Africa, but also China, India and America, and one that untangles the threads of doctrinal and philosophical debate running through Jewish history. (Photo: Oxford University.)

An associate professor of political science and security studies at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Miriam Elman is a regular contributor to the influential blog Legal Insurrection on topics concerning Israel and the BDS movement. Her books include Jerusalem: Conflict and Cooperation in a Contested City (2014) and her op-eds have been published by Haaretz, The Post-Standard and other outlets. Elman is also an editorial board member of the journals International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis and Political Research Quarterly. She serves as a member of the Council of Scholars of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a leading pro-Israel organization among higher education professionals. (Photo: Twitter.)

Pioneering American-Israel artist, designer and architect Neri Oxman has been revolutionizing the visual arts from her perch as professor at the Media Lab at MIT. Born and raised in Haifa, Oxman moved to the US in 2005 for her PhD. She has exhibited at some of the world's most famous public spaces, including the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City – whose curator, Paola Antonelli, has hailed Oxman as "a person ahead of her time, not of her time." Oxman's numerous awards include the 2014 Vilcek Prize in Design and the Cultural Leader award from the World Economic Forum in 2016, and the MIT Collier Medal in 2016. Intellectually, Oxman is known for her concept of "material ecology," in which products and building are considered in the context of their environments. (Photo: Noah Kalina.)

Polish sociologist and anti-racism advocate Rafał Pankowski attracted the ire of his country's far right in 2018, with his trenchant criticism of legislation that would have criminalized the discussion of Polish collusion with the Nazi occupying authorities during World War II – when nearly 3 million Polish Jews were exterminated. Pankowski's article for the July 2018 edition of the Israel Journal of World Affairs, "The Resurgence of Antisemitic Discourse in Poland," probed the relationship between historical revisionism and antisemitism in today's Poland. An associate professor in sociology at Warsaw’s Collegium Civitas University and a co-founder of the Nigdy Więcej [Never Again] Association, which monitors and combats antisemitism and xenophobi, Pankowski's books include The Populist Radical Right in Poland (2010) and the forthcoming Poland: Inventing the Nation. Pankowski is frequently interviewed by The Algemeiner on Polish-Jewish affairs. (Photo: Screenshot.)

Israeli scientist Ruth Arnon earned both her MSc and her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem prior to joining the world-renowned Weizmann Institute in 1960. She is the incumbent of the Paul Ehrlich Chair in Immunochemistry and has held a number of senior posts at the Institute. Arnon has made significant contributions to the fields of vaccine development and cancer research, and to the study of parasitic diseases. She co-developed Copaxone, a multiple sclerosis (MS) drug currently marketed worldwide. Arnon is currently performing research on a universal, recombinant influenza vaccination. Her honors include the French Légion d'Honneur and the Israel Prize. In 2010, Arnon became the first woman to be elected as president of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities. (Photo: Weizmann Institute of Science.)

British-born academic Simon Schama is professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. He taught history at Cambridge (Christ's College), Oxford (Brasenose College) and art history and history at Harvard before coming to Columbia. His many books have won the Wolfson Award for History, the W.H. Smith Prize for Literature, the National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and many other honors. Among Schama's acclaimed recent works are his two-volume The Story of the Jews, along with an accompanying BBC/PBS television series hailed by The Guardian as a "towering achievement that demonstrates Schama's finest qualities to exhilarating effect." Two previous television series presented by Schama on British and American history won Broadcast Guild Awards. (Photo: Wikimedia.)

Thane Rosenbaum is an essayist, law professor, and author of several novels. His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Haaretz, Huffington Post and Daily Beast, among other national publications. He serves as the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. He also moderates an annual series of discussions on culture, world events and politics at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Rosenbaum is a distinguished fellow at New York University School of Law, where he directs the Forum on Law, Culture & Society. In its review of Rosenbaum's 2005 book The Myth of Moral Justice, the New York Times declared that "Rosenbaum has accomplished what multitudes of professors long for and so rarely achieve: He has set the terms for public debate." (Photo: Maxine Dovere.)