Derek Penslar
William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History
Harvard University

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’s books include Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (2001), Israel in History (2006), Jews and the Military: A History (2013), Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (2020), and Zionism: An Emotional State (2023). He is currently working on a global history of the 1948 Palestine War. Penslar a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

 

Selected Publications

Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918 (Indiana University Press, 1991)

Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (University of California Press, 2001)

Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (Rutledge, 2006)

The Origins of the State of Israel: A Documentary History, 1882-1948 (with Eran Kaplan; University of Wisconsin Press, 2011)

Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Press, 2013)