American scholar and academic
David N. Myers (born November 2, 1960) is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History. Myers was the president and CEO of the Center for Jewish History from July 2017 to August 2018.[1] He serves as the President of the New Israel Fund Board.
Early life
A native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Myers received his A.B. cum laude from Yale University in 1982.[2] He commenced graduate studies in Jewish history at Tel Aviv University (1982–84), where he studied with Anita Shapira, Yaakov Shavit, Matitiyahu Mintz, and Moshe Mishkinsky, before moving on to study medieval Jewish thought with Isadore Twersky at Harvard University (1984–85).[2] He then moved to Columbia University, where he worked under the supervision of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, whose work and thought left a profound impression on him and remain a source of ongoing scholarly interest. Myers received his Ph.D. with distinction in 1991.[2]
Academic career
Myers joined the faculty of the UCLA History Department in 1991 as a lecturer and 1992 as an assistant professor. He published his first book, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History, in 1995. Myers served for ten years as the director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies and, from 2010 to 2015, as the Robert N. Burr Department Chair of the UCLA History Department.[3] He also has served since 2003 as the co-editor, along with Elliott Horowitz and Natalie Dohrmann, of the Jewish Quarterly Review.[4] He is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.[5] He received the inaugural Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA in 2015.[2]
In 2022, he completed a book with Nomi M. Stolzenberg on the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, New York.[3] This book, American Shtetl, was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for American Jewish Studies in 2022.
Myers' early work focused on the intersection of the history of Jewish historiography and the history of Zionism in his dissertation and first book on the founding generation of the Institute for Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His next book, Resisting History, continued his interest in intellectual history and modes of historical thought, but shifted focus to German Jewish thinkers in the late Wilhelmine and Weimar eras. Myers' next book, Between Jew and Arab, engaged the enigmatic Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz—and an intriguing essay on Palestinian refugees that he wrote for inclusion in his monumental book Bavel vi-Yerushalayim, but ultimately decided not to include. Myers then wrote a short synthesis on Jewish history as part of the Oxford University Press VSI series. His next book, The Stakes of History, was a reflection on the historian and historiographical practice that was initially delivered as the Franz Rosenzweig Lectures at Yale in 2014. Already in the early 2000s, Myers began to develop a scholarly interest in the history and politics of Haredi communities, especially Kiryas Joel, New York. For almost two decades, he worked together with his wife on a book on Kiryas Joel that was published in 2022 as American Shtetl. At present, Myers is working on a research project devoted to mid-twentieth-century population displacements through the lens of political and affective history.
Center For Jewish History
In 2017, Myers was appointed CEO of Center for Jewish History.
Following Myers' appointment, some in the Jewish community objected to his activism in organizations supportive of Israeli-Palestinian peace and co-existence, while simultaneously hundreds of Jewish historians responded by expressing their support for Myers. Those who demanded his resignation included Israeli Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich,[6] as well as the Zionist Organization of America and others.[7]
[8][9][10][11] The right-wing Middle East Forum opined "Myers may present a moderate façade, but his academic & political affiliations expose his radical core."
[12] According to the Forward, "the campaign against Myers appears to have shaken the CJH," though Myers has stated that the protests were only a nuisance early in his tenure and were not the reason for his decision to leave the center. “After the first two unpleasant months, I had a great time here,” Myers said.
Despite the attacks by groups associated with the Israeli right, Jewish studies scholars in the United States largely rallied behind Myers. In an op-ed defending Myers, Brandeis professors Jonathan Sarna and Rabbi David Ellenson wrote, "The writings of David Myers indisputably fall well within the scholarly mainstream of Jewish life and they are unquestionably supportive of Israel’s basic right to exist."[1]
Myers stepped down from this position in August 2018, returning to UCLA full time. “This is the result of months of deliberation spent on planes going back and forth and really asking myself, Where do I want to be in life?” he said.[1]
New Israel Fund
He became President of the New Israel Fund board in October 2018 after serving as a board member. He also has served as an instructor for the Wexner Heritage Foundation, and writes frequently on matters of contemporary Jewish concern.[13]
