Derek Penslar

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University and the Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He also taught at 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),  Jews and the Military: A History (2013), Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader; (2020), and Zionism: An Emotional State (2023).  He is currently writing a global history of the 1948 Palestine War. Penslar is a Fellow of the American Society for Jewish Research and the Royal Society of Canada.  He is also an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.