Panellist Bios:

Professor Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. His research specialties are modern Jewish history in Europe, Israel, and North America. Between 1998 and 2016, Derek held the Samuel Zacks Chair in Jewish History at U of T, and between 2012 and 2016, he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies at Oxford. Derek has written a number of books, including Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe, Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective; Jews and the Military: A History; and, most recently, Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (2020). Derek is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and president of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Mark S. Anshan is a lawyer and a former Canadian diplomat, serving on several non-profit boards. He provides legal, business, strategic and organisational advice to not-for-profits and charities. Prior to becoming a lawyer, he served in the Canadian Foreign Service at the United Nations and the Canadian Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. Mark is a past President of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and past President of ARZA Canada and past Chair of ARZENU. He currently serves as a Director of Project Rozana Canada.

Professor David Dewitt joined York University in 1983, following studies at UBC, University of Chicago, and Stanford University and appointments at UBC and U of Alberta. He is now University Professor Emeritus & Senior Scholar, International Relations. Author and editor of 11 books on international affairs and foreign policy, he served from 1988-2006 as Director, York Centre for International & Security Studies (YCISS), two terms as York’s Associate Vice-President Research & Innovation, followed by a four-year leave of absence as Vice President Research & Programs at the independent think tank, Centre for International Governance & Innovation (CIGI). He is currently an advisor to the recently established Canadian think tank, International Peace & Diplomacy (IPD).

Jon Allen was Canada’s Ambassador to Israel from 2006-2010. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto and at Glendon College, York University and a Distinguished Fellow of the Canada International Council. He is the President of Project Rozana, a not for profit whose objective is to build bridges between Palestinians and Israelis via the health sector, and a Member of the Board of Transparency International Canada.

Professor Howard Adelman retired as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at York University in 2003. He was the founder and director of York’s Centre for Refugee Studies and editor of Refuge for ten years. Best known for his work in applied philosophy, he co-authored a major study entitled Early Warning and Conflict Management: Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda (1996) as part of the 5-volume study International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience. In December 2016, Adelman was named a Member of the Order of Canada.

Dylan Hanley is currently Director, Public Affairs with The U15, advocating on behalf of Canada’s leading research universities to the federal government. Prior to his role with The U15, Dylan spent almost a decade with CIJA, Canada’s leading Jewish advocacy organization, where he was responsible for government relations and university outreach. His work there included dealing with federal and provincial governments, senior university administrations, and working to build bridges between Canada and Israel around issues of innovation and R&D. Since leaving CIJA, Dylan continues strong involvement in the Canadian Jewish community, notably in building Canada-Israel partnerships in science and innovation, including as Canadian co-chair of the bilateral working group on research partnerships with Global Affairs Canada.

Guest Speaker Bios:

Mr. Adi Schwartz is a researcher, academic and author, focusing on issues relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University. Mr. Schwartz is a published author in both English and Hebrew. A former staff writer and senior editor for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he has published articles in the Israeli press, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The Forward, The Tablet and The Jewish Chronicle.

Anna Shternshis is the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her doctoral degree (DPhil) from Oxford University in 2001. Shternshis is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 – 1939(Indiana UP, 2006) and When Sonia Met Boris:An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin(Oxford UP, 2017).  Together with artist Psoy Korolenko, Shternshis created and directed the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory project, an initiative that brought back to life forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. A recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, she is currently working on a book tentatively entitled LastYiddish Heroes: A Lost and Found Archive of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union about Yiddish music created in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

Dov Waxman is the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Professor of Political Science. He is also the director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Before joining UCLA, he was the Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and his B.A. from Oxford University. His research focuses on the conflict over Israel-Palestine, Israeli politics and foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations, American Jewry’s relationship with Israel, Jewish politics, and contemporary antisemitism. He is the author of four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (Palgrave, 2006), Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Asher Susser is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He was the Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at TAU for twelve years and taught for over thirty-five years in TAU’s Department of Middle Eastern History. He has been a Fulbright Fellow; a visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, Brandeis University, and the Stein Family Professor of Modern Israel Studies at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Israel, Jordan and Palestine; The Two-State Imperative. His online course on The Emergence of the Modern Middle East has been taken by some 120,000 students in over 160 countries.

Tami Amanda Jacoby is Professor of Political Science at the University of Manitoba where she has taught for 24 years. Her areas of expertise are: Middle East Politics, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Middle East diasporas, gender and identity politics. She has an MA from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. from York University, having completed a doctoral thesis on women’s protest movements in Israel. Her publications include Redefining Security in the Middle East and Women in Zones of Conflict: Power and Resistance in Israel. She is an Israeli citizen, having lived and worked in Jerusalem for roughly 7 years, with frequent visits since, to family and for fieldwork, much of which was done in the Palestinian Territories. She has also travelled extensively to conflict zones and presented her research throughout the world.

 (Updates Coming Soon)