Founding executive committee

David Hirsh has pioneered a sociological account of contemporary antizionism and its relationship to antisemitism. He has worked on crimes against humanity, totalitarianism, democracy and populism. He teaches core Sociology, Criminology, Crimes against Humanity and Human Rights courses at UG and MA level.

He was central in building the Engage network and website that led opposition to the proposal for an academic boycott of Israel from 2004 and that led the fight against antisemitic politics in Britain, especially on campus. Hirsh was a leading critic of the ideas underpinning the Corbyn movement and he has been instrumental in shaping the democratic and Jewish responses in Britain, and further afield, to antisemitism. He has a global reputation as a scholar and as leader of the  fight against antisemitism. He has appeared as an expert witness in a number of court cases and inquiries, he has written formal reports, and he has chaired a university academic appeals panel on antisemitism.

Ayal Feinberg is Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights at Gratz College, where he oversees the world’s largest Holocaust and Genocide Studies graduate program. He created the country’s first graduate program in Antisemitism Studies and the world’s first doctoral program in applied Antisemitism Studies. His work on antisemitism, hate crime, and human rights bridges research, policy, and practice, informing responses across academic, public, legal, and institutional settings. Ayal Feinberg is Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights at Gratz College, where he oversees the world’s largest Holocaust and Genocide Studies graduate program.

Dr. David Barak-Gorodetsky is the head of the Elizabeth and Tony Comper Interdisciplinary Center for the study of Antisemitism and Racism, and the director of the Ruderman Program for American-Jewish Studies at the University of Haifa. He is also a member of the academic committee of the newly established Freeze Center for shared society, and teaches at the interfaith MA program. His research interests include Jewish-American history and religious thought, Israel and World Jewry relations, Antisemitism and Political Theology, and the intersection of Antisemitism, technology and AI.

Born and raised in Israel, David was formerly a technology expert in the Israeli Air Force and a VP at an Israeli startup company in NY. In recent years, he has been a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and a Shalom Hartman and JPPI Fellow. He recently taught about Israel in Jindal Global University in India, and is a board member of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS), and was the recent chair of its conference in Haifa. He writes frequently to various media outlets and is an acknowledged public speaker.