Jews and Whiteness

REGISTRATION CLOSED, WALKS UP WELCOME: ABOUT THIS LECTURE:  Are American Jews white? The question, answered differently by different generations of American Jews, gets at the heart of American Jewish identity. Have Jews remained separate and distinct from the rest of middle-class America or have they assimilated so much that they have become white? Come explore the contentious history and sociology of Jews and racial definition. We’ll journey back to the 1960s and discover some (surprising) insights into the debate over Jewish whiteness.

ABOUT THIS SPEAKER:  Dr. Marc Dollinger holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University. He has served as research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, where he coordinated the program in Jewish Studies. Professor Dollinger is author of four scholarly books in American Jewish history, most recently Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing The Alliance in the 1960s. His next project traces his own experience fighting campus anti-Semitism at both right-wing and left-wing universities.

Dr. Dollinger is a past president of both the Jewish Community High School of the Bay
and Brandeis Hillel Day School. Dr. Dollinger serves as academic vice president of
Lehrhaus Judaica as well as trustee of URJ Camp Newman. He sits on the California
advisory committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was named
Volunteer of the Year by the SF Jewish Community Federation, and was awarded the San Francisco JCRC’s Courageous Leader award.

Professor Dollinger helped actress Helen Hunt learn about her Jewish roots
on the prime-time NBC show, “Who Do You Think You Are?”