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New Israel Fund Announces David N. Myers, Leading Professor of Jewish History, As Next President of the Board

EMBARGOED UNTIL SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14 at 7:00 PM US Pacific

14 October 2018

San Francisco, CA: Today, the New Israel Fund (NIF) announced that David N. Myers, a leading professor of Jewish history and longtime NIF board member, is the new president of NIF’s board. He is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA and the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He is preceded as president of NIF’s board by renowned Israeli attorney and public official Talia Sasson, who concluded her three-year term in October. Myers has served on the NIF board since 2013.

Daniel Sokatch, NIF CEO, said, “I am thrilled to welcome Professor David Myers as our next board president. David brings a passionate commitment to Israel and to the values of democracy and equality, and a vision for the next chapter of Israel’s future informed by his study of our past. At a time when politicians have sown fear and division, David has used his platform to strengthen the bridge between Israelis and Americans who share progressive values and are working toward a common vision. He is a prominent public intellectual, a great scholar, and a dear friend. I congratulate him and look forward to working with him in his new leadership role.”

Myers said, “For those of us who care about Israel’s future as a liberal democracy, there is no better home than the New Israel Fund. At a time when so many of those in power would undermine Israel’s democratic foundations, the New Israel Fund is leading the movement toward equality and social justice. They are my heroes: the staff in Israel, America, and around the world, and our incredible grantees in Israel who lead the charge every day toward a better future for their children. It is an incredible honor to take on this role as president of the board of the New Israel Fund.”

Myers is expected to serve as president of the NIF board for a three-year term. There are 29 members of the NIF board, including Israelis and people from the U.S. and around the world. A full list of board members can be found here.

NIF provides millions of dollars in grants to organizations promoting democracy and equality in Israel each year. Donors come from North America, Europe, Australia, and Israel. Tens of thousands of donors choose to give to NIF each year.

Prof. David Myers’s full bio is below:

David N. Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA as well as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. Myers served as President/CEO of the Center for Jewish History in New York during 2017-18. An alumnus of Yale College (1982), Myers undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before receiving his Ph.D. with distinction in 1991 in Jewish history from Columbia University. He has written widely in the fields of Jewish intellectual and cultural history. His books include Re-inventing the Jewish Past (Oxford, 1995), Resisting History: The Crisis of Historicism in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton, 2003), Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Brandeis, 2008), Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2017), and The Stakes of Jewish History: On the Use and Abuse of Jewish History for Life (Yale, 2018). Myers has also edited or co-edited nine books, including most recently The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act (California, 2018). At present, he is completing a monograph, with Nomi Stolzenberg, on the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, New York.

From 2010-15, Myers served as the Robert N. Burr Chair of the History Department. Prior to that, he served as Vice Chair for Academic Personnel in the History Department (2002-04). For ten years, Myers served as Director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (1996-2000, 2004-09, 2010-11). Myers has taught at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). He has received fellowships from the Leo Baeck Institute, Fulbright Foundation, Lady David Trust, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Myers has been a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania on three occasions (1995, 2009-10, 2016); he has also visited at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem in 1997. Myers has served as a member of the board of the Association for Jewish Studies, as well as a teacher for the Wexner Heritage Foundation. He is also a member of the board of the New Israel Fund. He writes frequently on matters of contemporary Jewish concern. Since 2002, Myers has served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, as well as a Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.

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