Visiting Professors

Each semester, the Max Weinreich Center is host to one or more visiting professorships. The visiting professors in East European Jewish Studies, Yiddish Language and Linguistics, and East European Jewish Literature conduct research in YIVO’s archives and library, deliver lectures, teach courses, and serve as mentors to graduate students.   

The Anne E. Leibowitz Visiting Professor in Residence in Music was made possible by a generous grant from the Anne E. Leibowitz Fund, which was created by the Leibowitz family to honor the memory of their late mother, Anne E. Leibowitz.

2017 – 2018

Dr. Neil W. Levin, Artistic Director and Editor in Chief of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music and emeritus professor of Jewish music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish History was established in 2014 with a gift from the Kronhill Pletka Foundation which was created by Irene Pletka in 2007 to honor the memory of her parents, Julia and Jacob Kronhill (Kronzylberg), who fled Poland in 1939. After spending the war in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, the family succeeded in reaching Australia, where they were active in Jewish community life, with Jacob particularly committed to Jewish welfare, increasing access to Yiddish education, freeing Soviet Jewry, and the defense of human rights.

Spring 2018

Paul Berman, critic-at-large of Tablet magazine

Spring 2017

Dr. Jack Jacobs, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

Spring 2016

Dr. Samuel D. Kassow, Trinity College, Hartford, CT

Spring 2015

Dr. David E. Fishman, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS)

Spring 2014

Dr. Steven Zipperstein, Stanford University

The Albert B. Ratner Visiting Scholar in East European Jewish Literature is made possible with the generous support of the Seedlings Foundation.

Fall 2014

Dr. Gennady Estraikh, New York University (NYU)

The Atran Visiting Professor in Yiddish Language and Linguistics was inaugurated in 2015 with a generous grant from the Atran Foundation. The Atran Foundation, for over 50 years, has been instrumental in the preservation and education of the Yiddish language, providing for chairs at various esteemed educational institutions, while also supporting many smaller organizations in the fields of labor rights, community activism, Jewish culture, music and the arts, as well as many other charitable and worthy causes.

2016

Dr. Beatrice Lang, Johns Hopkins University

Spring 2015

Dr. Rakhmiel Peltz, Drexel University