Steven E. Zipperstein

Director, UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies

Department: School of Public Affairs, UCLA Engineering, Global Studies
Email: szipperstein@international.ucla.edu

Professor Steven E. Zipperstein teaches in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He also teaches for the Global Studies Interdepartmental Program within the UCLA International Institute and for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University Law School and a Visiting Lecturer at the Hertie School in Berlin. He serves as a Distinguished Senior Scholar at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development and as a Senior Fellow at The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation in the Netherlands. He is also a member of the Academic Advisory Board of "Justice," the peer-reviewed publication of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.

Zipperstein is the author of three peer-reviewed books: The Legal Case for Palestine: A Critical Assessment (Routledge, 2024), Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939-1948 (Routledge, 2022), and Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Trials of Palestine (Routledge 2020). He has also authored several peer-reviewed journal articles and law review articles, and he is a regular contributor to the Times of Israel and other publications.

Before joining UCLA, Zipperstein practiced law for 40 years in California, Washington D.C. and New York/New Jersey. Zipperstein has been elected to the American Law Institute and named a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. During his career, Zipperstein worked as a law firm litigator, a federal prosecutor and Justice Department official, and as the Chief Legal Officer of BlackBerry Ltd. and Verizon Wireless. Zipperstein served as Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno during the 1995 congressional hearings regarding the events in Waco, Texas, and as Counselor for former Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller regarding the 1992-93 congressional investigation of the “Iraq-gate” matter. As a federal prosecutor, Zipperstein was the highest-ranking career lawyer in the United States Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, where he tried more than a dozen felony jury cases and argued 23 cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Zipperstein is an Honorary Trustee of the Mexican-American Bar Foundation, and he is a recipient of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association's Employer of Choice Award.