Michael Brenner
Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies
American University

Michael Brenner is Distinguished Professor of History and the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies and director of the Center for Israel Studies at American University in Washington, DC. He also holds the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, held teaching positions at Indiana University and Brandeis University and was a visiting professor at Stanford, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Haifa, Zurich, Vienna, and the Central European University in Budapest. He is the International President of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture (Jerusalem-New York-London) and an elected member of the Bavarian Academy of Science, the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana in Italy and the American Academy for Jewish Research. He chairs the Academic Advisory Board of the Franz Rosenzweig Center at the Hebrew University Jerusalem and is a member of several academic boards in Israel, the US, and Europe. In 2014 he was awarded the order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Selected Publications

In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2018)

A Short History of the Jews (Princeton UP 2010)

Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History (Princeton UP 2010)

Zionism: A Brief History (Marcus Wiener 2003)

The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (Yale UP 2000)

co-author of German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 2: 1780-1871 (Columbia University Press 1997)