Harvard Divinity School Creators & Guests

Dr. Catherine Anne Brekus is a historian of American religious history. Her work focuses on the relationship between religion and American culture, and on the history of women, gender, Christianity, and the evangelical movement. Currently, she is a Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard Divinity School.

Dr. Sara Roy is an American political economist and a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, she has found parallels between Nazi treatment of Jews and Israeli soldiers’ treatment of Palestinians. A specialist of Israel–Palestine, Roy is the author of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development, and over 100 other publications on Palestine & Israel.

Dr. Derek Jonathan Penslar, (born 1958) is an American-Canadian comparative historian with interests in the relationship between modern Israel and diaspora Jewish societies, global nationalist movements, European colonialism, and post-colonial states. Penslar serves as director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.In 2024, Penslar was appointed co-chair Harvard's task force on Combating Antisemitism. Critics objected due to his 2023 signature of an open letter against Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to suppress judicial authority in Israel. Penslar's recent books include Zionism: An Emotional State (2023) andUnacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Studies and the Historiography of Zionism (co-edited, 2023).

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney, author, activist, and assistant professor at Rutgers University.

Mitri Raheb (Arabic: متري الراهب) is a Palestinian Christian, Lutheran pastor, and founding president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem. Rev. Dr. Raheb is author of many books, including Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible; In the Eye of the Storm: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire; Politics of Persecution: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire, and The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine.

Shaul Magid is a Conservative rabbi who is the Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. From 2004-2018, he was a professor of religious studies and the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair of Jewish Studies in Modern Judaism at Indiana University as well as a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. From 1996-2004, he was a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; he was chair of the Department of Jewish Philosophy from 2000-2004.