ABOUT THE BOOK

How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal—a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic—a light unto nations, working to repair the world? The Star and the Stripes is an original, provocative interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the nineteenth century. Michael Barnett argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people's survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice

Rooted in the understanding of how history shapes a political community's sense of the world, The Star and the Stripes is a bold reading of the past, present, and possible future foreign policies of American Jews.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

MICHAEL BARNETT is University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University. His research interests include the Middle East, humanitarian action, global governance, global ethics, and the United Nations. Among his many books are Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda; Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order; Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism; Rules for the World: International Organizations in World Politics (with Martha Finnemore); Security Communities (co-edited with Emanuel Adler); Sacred Aid (co-edited with Janice Stein); Power and Global Governance (co-edited with Raymond Duvall); and Humanitarianism in Question (co-edited with Thomas Weiss). Currently, he is an Associate Editor of International Organization. His current research projects range from international paternalism, the changing architecture of global governance, to the relationship between human rights and humanitarianism. His most recent book is The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of the American Jews (Princeton University Press).

ABOUT THE DISCUSSANTS

DALIA DASSA KAYE is the director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. In 2011-2012 she was a visiting professor and fellow at UCLA's International Institute and Burkle Center. Before joining RAND, Kaye served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the Dutch Foreign Ministry. She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Brookings Institution research fellowship and The John W. Gardner Fellowship for Public Service. Kaye publishes widely on Middle East regional security issues, including in journals like Survival, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, Foreign Policy, and Middle East Policy. She is author of Talking to the Enemy: Track Two Diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia (RAND), Beyond the Handshake: Multilateral Cooperation in the Arab-Israeli Peace Process (Columbia University Press) and has co-authored a number of RAND monographs on a range of regional security issues. Kaye received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

DAVID N. MYERS is a professor and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA. He received his A.B. from Yale College in 1982, and undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before completing his doctorate at Columbia in 1991. He has written extensively in the fields of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history, with a particular interest in the history of Jewish historiography. He has authored Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford: 1995), Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton, 2003), and Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Brandeis University Press, 2008). Since 2003, he has served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Myers is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He has served as director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies from 1996-2000 and 2004-2009. At UCLA, Myers teaches lectures and seminars in Jewish history.

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