penslarDerek Penslar is a comparative historian with interests in the relationship between modem Israel and diaspora Jewish societies, global nationalist movements, and post-colonial states. A native of California, he has taught at the University of Toronto since 1998, where he holds the Samuel Zacks Chair in Jewish history. He also holds the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modem Israel Studies at Oxford, where he has taught since 2012. Penslar is author or editor often books, most recently Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Press). Penslar co-edits The Journal oflsraeli History and serves on the board of directors of the Association for Israel Studies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

 

Pinto-Diana-PhotoDiana Pinto is an intellectual historian and writer living in Paris. She is the daughter of Italian Jewish parents, was educated in the United States and is a long time resident of France. She is a graduate of Harvard University where she also obtained her PhD in Contemporary European History. She has written about this multiple belonging in her intellectual autobiography, Entre deux mondes, (Odile Jacob Paris 1991). Primarily interested in multiple identities inside pluralist democracies, Diana Pinto has written and lectured widely on Jewish life in contemporary Europe. She has been the Director of the “Voices for the res publica” Project at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, London. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was editor in chief of a pan-European review for the general public, Belvedere, and subsequently a consultant to the Political Directorate of the Council of Europe on civil society in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Her latest book, Israel Has Moved, (Harvard University Press 2013) has also been published in French (Israel a demenage, Stock) and in German as Israel ist umgezogen (Suhrkamp 2013). She is currently writing a book on the re-mapping of the Jewish world, including the Jewish presence in Europe. She has held an ACLS fellowship, is on the board of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, and has been a founder of the recently closed (under Putin) Moscow School of Political Studies now in exile.

 

Bret_Stephens_Headshot.jpg.680x680_q85_autocrop_crop-smart_upscaleBret Stephens writes “Global View,” the foreign-affairs column of the Wall Street Journal, for which he was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. He is the Journal’s deputy editorial-page editor, responsible for the opinion pages of the paper’s sister editions in Europe and Asia, as well as a member of the Journal’s editorial board. He is also a regular panelist on the Journal Editorial Report, a political talk show carried nationally by the Fox News Channel. Mr. Stephens joined the Journal in New York in 1998 and later worked for the paper in Brussels. In January 2002, at the age of 28, he was named editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, where he was responsible for the news, opinion, international and digital editions, and also wrote a weekly column. Mr. Stephens returned to the Journal in late 2004 and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum the following year. He has won numerous journalism awards in addition to the Pulitzer, and reported stories from around the world, including Burma, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. He is the author of “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder”, recently reissued in paperback by Penguin.

 

Thursday, 7 April 2016 – 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility

Munk School of Global Affairs – 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto

Register: http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/event/20141

For more information: sylvia.adler@utoronto.ca