David N. Myers
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. 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 College in 1982. He commenced graduate studies in Jewish history at Tel Aviv University (1982–84) before moving on to study medieval Jewish  thought at Harvard University (1984–85). He then moved to Columbia University, where he worked under the supervision of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. Myers received his Ph.D. with distinction in 1991. 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 2010–15, as the Robert N. Burr Department Chair of the UCLA  History Department. He also has served since 2003 as the co-editor, along with Elliott Horowitz and Natalie Dohrmann, of the "Jewish Quarterly Review". He is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He received the inaugural Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA in 2015. Recently, he completed a book on the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, New York. 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, as well as the Zionist Organization of America and others. 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." 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. 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.