Essays

Featuring Essays by:

AUTHOR BIOS

Charles Jacobs (www.charlesjacobs.org) has, over four decades, founded, co-founded, and led several Jewish and human rights organizations, including the American Anti-Slavery Group, the David Project, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, and the Boston branch of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA). In 2000, he received Boston’s Freedom Award from Coretta Scott King for his work in helping liberate thousands of black slaves in Sudan. In 2007, the Forward named him as among America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. He holds a doctorate in Education from Harvard University. See more at www.charlesjacobs.org

Avi Goldwasser is a social activist and film producer. He is a co-founder of the David Project, which was established to support Jewish students on campuses. He has served on the board of directors of several Jewish organizations including the Boston branch of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), and Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE). Goldwasser has produced several films, including the award-winning documentary The Forgotten Refugees (2004), The J Street Challenge: The Seductive Allure of Peace in Our Time (2014), and several campus-related films including Columbia Unbecoming (2004) and Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus (2016).

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org, a senior contributor for the Federalist, and a columnist for The New York Post and Newsweek.

Richard A. Landes is a historian living in Jerusalem, formerly professor of history at Boston University. His work focuses on apocalyptic and millennial beliefs at the turn of the first and second millennia, 1000 and 2000 c.e. His past books include The Apocalyptic Year 1000 (2003) and Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience (2011). He coined the term “Pallywood” in 2003 while investigating the Muhammad al-Durah affair, and maintains a blog critical of Western journalism called The Augean Stables. His latest book is Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (Academic Studies Press, 2022).

Joshua Block is a Jewish activist with more than twenty-five years of experience in public relations and foreign policy advocacy, chosen by the Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. A Clinton administration appointee, he was later a spokesman for the 1996 Clinton-Gore and 2000 Gore-Lieberman presidential campaigns. A senior AIPAC staff member for nearly a decade, Block served as CEO and president of The Israel Project from 2012 to 2019. Block now works at the Hudson Institute, where he focuses his scholarship on American national security, Middle East policy, and promoting a deeper U.S.-Israeli alliance.

Rebecca Sugar is a philanthropic consultant and writer living in New York City. She has been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Christian Post, JNS.org, the Spectator, and the Jewish Journal.

Caroline B. Glick is an award-winning journalist and former senior columnist for the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom. She is the author of Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad (2008) and The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East (2014). The Israeli Solution has been endorsed by leading U.S. policymakers, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Ted Cruz, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. She now hosts the podcast The Caroline Glick Show for JNS.

Naya Lekht received her Ph.D. from UCLA in Russian Literature, where she wrote her dissertation on how Soviet writers pushed communist-enforced boundaries of Holocaust representation in literature and film. A passionate educator and public speaker, Naya writes and teaches on the topic of antisemitism, and Soviet influences on contemporary anti-Zionism in particular. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism and Policy and education editor at White Rose Magazine.

Richard Kronenfeld holds a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University and has taught mathematics and physics as adjunct faculty at Arizona State University, and at six of the colleges in the Maricopa Community College District (Metro Phoenix area).

Bruce D. Abramson, Ph.D., J.D. is the author of five books, most recently The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021). He is the founder of the strategic consultancy Informationism, Inc., and a director of the American Center for Education and Knowledge.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor, and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture, & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled Saving Free Speech… from Itself.

Morton A. Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel group in the U.S., founded in 1897. Mr. Klein is widely regarded as one of the leading Jewish activists in the United States. His more than four hundred articles and letters have been published in newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals around the world, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, Washington Times, New Yorker, Commentary, Breitbart, Jerusalem Post, and many others.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, is perhaps America’s most famous advocate for the state of Israel. He is the author of fifty-three books, including Chutzpah (1991), The Case for Israel (2003), The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved (2005), The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace (2008), Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client (2019), Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process (2020), and The Case against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities (2021). His most recent book is Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law (2023).

Rabbi Cary Kozberg has served as a congregational rabbi, Hillel director, and healthcare chaplain. He currently serves as rabbi of Temple Sholom in Springfield, Ohio.

M. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, based in Phoenix, Arizona, and the co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement. He is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and former vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is author of the book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith (2012) and a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. He is also a physician in private practice.

William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, founder of the blog site Legal Insurrection, and president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, a non-profit devoted to free expression and academic freedom on campuses. Recently, he has created the website criticalrace.org as a resource for concerned parents to fight critical race theory in schools, and equalprotect.org to fight against racial “equity” discrimination in hiring.

Johanna E. Markind is research editor and counsel at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She has worked in the Justice Department and as a public defender. She has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Forward, and the Federal Lawyer, among other outlets.

Rebecca G. Schgallis is an educator in Virginia. She was the Humanities Department chair at the nation’s number-one high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, teaching history, religion, and government. She holds master’s degrees in both education and history, specializing in American and twentieth-century German history with her research focusing on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. She is a co-founder of United Against Antisemitism-Northern Virginia (UAA). 

Karen D. Hurvitz is a lawyer and artist in Massachusetts. She has taught at Georgetown University Law Center, Boston University Law School, and Suffolk University Law School. Her practice is currently devoted to representing students in high school and college who object to non-historical, political propaganda in course materials. She is counsel for Education Without Indoctrination, and on the Board of LIBI, the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Joanne Bregman is a Nashville attorney engaged in public policy work on a variety of issues including advocacy for Israel and the Jewish community.

Lauri B. Regan is the New York chapter president, advisory board member, and executive board member of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), and the vice president, treasurer, and board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME). She also served on the board of the National Women’s Committee of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The opinions expressed herein are her own and are not being expressed in her professional capacities with EMET and SPME.

Dr. Amy Rosenthal and Josh Ravitch are co-founders of the North Carolina Coalition for Israel.

Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. He is the author of Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924–1951, and Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924–1951, among other works. He also co-edited the collection A Vanished Ideology: Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-speaking World in the Twentieth Century.

Ben Poser is the research director for the Jewish Leadership Project and associate director of the American Anti-Slavery Group. He is also a senior editor at White Rose Magazine.