Title: Professor of History and Chair in Holocaust Studies
Company: Yeshiva University
Location: New York, New York, United States
Joshua D. Zimmerman, PhD, professor of history and chair of holocaust studies at Yeshiva University, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Educators for dedication, achievements, and leadership in academia.
With over two and a half decades of experience, Dr. Zimmerman has built a successful career in history education, specializing in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Poland. He currently excels as a professor of history and the Eli & Diana Zborowski Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History at Yeshiva University, a position he has held since 1998. He has also contributed significantly to the field as the book review editor and editorial board member of “Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry” since 2004. He is the author of several notable works, including “Jozef Pilsudski, Founding Father of Modern Poland” for Harvard in 2022, “The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939 to 1945” for Cambridge University Press in 2017, and “Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Czarist Russia, 1892-1914.” In addition, he has contributed articles to professional journals and popular newspapers, and is a dedicated member of several professional organizations, including the International Advisory Board for The Auschwitz-Jewish Center, the Association for Jewish Studies, the American Historical Association, and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Dr. Zimmerman’s greatest accomplishments include being a fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2011 and 2012, a fellow at the Oxford Centre at Oxford University in 2005, and a Fulbright Fellow from 2004 to 2005. Laying a solid educational foundation for these achievements, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1989, a Master of Arts in history from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993, and a PhD in comparative history from Brandeis University in 1998. Reflecting on his path, he was deeply influenced by his father, who held a PhD in history and taught at a university. Growing up in a household filled with books, he often attended his father’s lectures as a teenager, which left a lasting impression on him. Witnessing his father’s command of the classroom, along with inspiration from a professor of Russian history, fueled his passion for academia and teaching.
Dr. Zimmerman is best known for his outstanding work on two major collaborative projects, which involved editing two influential books that resulted from conferences he organized at Yeshiva University. At these conferences, he invited leading scholars to submit papers for publication and personally wrote introductions for each one. These volumes have since become standard works in the field, largely due to his foresight in curating the participation of top experts in the field. He attributes his success to an internal drive and a passion for addressing unresolved conflicts, particularly focusing on the origins and rise of anti-Semitism and the complex relationships between Jews and non-Jews. In the coming years, he aims to publish a manuscript he recently completed. This collaborative project, undertaken with five other historians, is a documentary history of Jews in Poland, spanning from the earliest times to the present. His advice for aspiring professionals is to inspire a deep appreciation for history, emphasize the importance of fighting for basic human rights and freedom, and encourage them to become well-informed citizens.
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