Tikvah Scholars Program

Patrick Allitt is Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University. He was an undergraduate at Oxford in England (1974-1977), a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley (Ph.D., 1986), and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Princeton University. At Emory since 1988, he teaches courses on American intellectual, environmental, and religious history, on Victorian Britain, and on the Great Books.

Author of seven books (most recently A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism, 2014), he is also presenter of eight lecture series with “The Great Courses” (www.thegreatcourses.com), including “The Art of Teaching” and, most recently, “The Industrial Revolution.”

David Azerrad is an Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C. His research and writing focuses on classical liberalism, conservative political thought, and identity politics. Prior to joining Hillsdale, Azerrad was the Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation. He has taught previously at American University and the University of Dallas. A native of Montreal, Azerrad received his B.A. from Concordia University, his M.A. from Carleton University, and his Ph.D. in politics from the University of Dallas.

Harry Ballan is a managing director of Alliant‘s Global Mergers and Acquisitions Group and an adjunct professor at New York University Law School. He holds a B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Wilfred Feinberg in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, before spending almost 30 years practicing law at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. He served as dean of Touro Law School from 2016 to 2019 and was the founding dean of Tikvah Online Academy in 2020.

Judith Ballan teaches World and European history at SAR High School. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and a J.D. from Boston University. She was a law associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett for five years and taught at Ramaz High School for five years. She has been at SAR for 12 years, where she teaches 9th and 10th grade World History, AP European History, and has taught a senior elective on the Global Era. She recently teamed up with Tikvah Online Academy teachers to provide a weekly after-school humanities elective for SAR 10th graders.

Rabbi Scott Bolton serves as the spiritual leader of Congregation Or Zarua on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He served as head of school for two private day schools, before moving into a congregational position. His work in Jewish educational circles includes evaluating texts and preparing curricula that seek to celebrate and engender cultural identity while promoting understanding regarding the dignity of difference. “Educating everyone, from government officials to youth—tomorrow’s leaders—about how to express and take pride in their own heritages and at the same time dignify their neighbors’ is our tallest order,” said Rabbi Bolton.

Dr. Justin Cammy is professor and chair of the programs in Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College. A specialist in Yiddish literature and eastern European cultural history, he also teaches courses on Hebrew literature and Israeli history. Cammy’s publications range from essays on Yiddish writers to scholarly translations of foundational texts to introductions to new editions of works by Yiddish poets and memoirists that open them up to a broad readership. His scholarship on the generation of “when Yiddish was young” challenges post-war myths about Yiddish. Cammy’s recent critical edition and translation of Abraham Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony was awarded the 2022 Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies from the Modern Language Association, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Yiddish, and the Finestone Prize for the best translation of a book on a Jewish theme from the J.I. Segal Awards. Cammy holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard and a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from McGill, which included a junior year at the Rothberg International School at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For almost twenty years, he also has been a faculty member at both the Steiner summer program at the Yiddish Book Center and the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University.

Gila Fine is a teacher of Aggada at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, exploring the tales of the Talmud through philosophy, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and pop-culture. She is also a faculty member of the London School of Jewish studies, the Nachshon Project, and Amudim Seminary, and has taught thousands of students at conferences and communities across the Jewish world. Haaretz has called her “a young woman on her way to becoming one of the more outstanding Jewish thinkers of the next generation.”

Rachel Fish co-founded the nonprofit Boundless, a think-action tank partnering with community leaders across North America to revitalize Israel education and take bold collective action to combat Jew-hatred. Fish also serves as Special Advisor to The Brandeis University Presidential Initiative to Counter Antisemitism in Higher Education. She is also an associate research professor at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. In addition, Fish teaches Israeli history and society at The George Washington University as Visiting Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development. She has served on the faculty at Brandeis University, The George Washington University, and Harvard University, has written articles for several publications in the mainstream press and academic journals, and co-edited the book “Essential Israel: Essays for the 21st Century.”

Sherif Girgis joined Notre Dame Law School in 2021. His work at the intersection of philosophy and law—including criminal law, constitutional law, and jurisprudence—has appeared in academic and popular venues including the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy of Law, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Prior to joining Notre Dame, he practiced appellate and complex civil litigation at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., having previously served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Now completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, Girgis earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Felix S. Cohen Prize for best paper in legal philosophy. He earned a master’s degree (B.Phil.) in philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a bachelor’s in philosophy from Princeton, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude.

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb is chief education officer of Tikvah and founding dean of the Tikvah Scholars Program. Prior to joining Tikvah, Rabbi Gottlieb served as head of school at Yeshiva University High School for Boys and principal of the Maimonides School in Brookline, MA, and has taught at The Frisch School, Ida Crown Jewish Academy, Hebrew Theological College, Loyola University in Chicago, and the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. from Yeshiva College, rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, where his doctoral studies focused on the moral and political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. Rabbi Gottlieb’s work has been featured twice in the Wall Street Journal and his writing has appeared in First Things, Public Discourse, SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, The University Bookman, Tradition Online, the Algemeiner, From Within the Tent: Essays on the Weekly Parsha from Rabbis and Professors of Yeshiva University, and, most recently, Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith. He is a trustee of the Hildebrand Project and serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. He lives in Teaneck, NJ, with his wife and family.

Talia Harcsztark teaches at the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School, where she serves as Chair of the Tanakh Department. She holds a B.A. in Religion from Barnard College and a Master’s in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Her research focused on Judaism and gender. Talia currently lives in New York City.

Naya Lekht was born in the former Soviet Union and came to the United States with her family in 1989. She received her Ph.D. in Russian Literature and wrote her dissertation on Holocaust literature in the Soviet Union. Naya is currently the Education Editor for White Rose Magazine and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism and Policy. Naya has taught at both the collegiate and high school level courses on Russian literature, the Holocaust, Zionism, and history of Russian Jewry.

Hugh Liebert is a Professor of American Politics in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where he teaches courses in political philosophy, American politics, and civil-military relations. He also serves as Director of West Point’s Graduate Scholarship Program. Liebert is the author or editor of seven books, including Gibbon’s Christianity and Plutarch’s Politics, which won the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Harvard University.

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is the director of the Endowment for Middle East Truth’s Program for Emerging Democratic Voices from the Middle East. Hussein was born in Cairo, Egypt, into a family who raised another son to be an imam inspiring young people to become Jihadists. His critical intellect led him to find out more about Israel and Jews and to forge friendships with Israelis. Hussein received political asylum in the United States under President Barack Obama in 2012 and worked as an instructor for language and culture at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California. He then went on to work as an educator and public speaker for StandWithUs, educating students about cultural and geopolitical issues in the Middle East and helping them counter anti-Semitism. Hussein wrote an autobiography, Minority of One: The Unchaining of the Arab Mind, and his articles have appeared in Commentary, Newsweek, the Jewish Journal, JNS.org, Times of Israel, and Mosaic.

Daniel Polisar is the co-founder and executive vice president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel’s first liberal arts college. He previously served as the president of the Shalem Center from 2002-2013 and also as its director of research, academic director, and editor-in-chief of its journal, Azure. From 2006 to 2009, he served as the founding chairman, within the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister, of the National Council for the Commemoration of the Legacy of Theodor Herzl. He received his B.A. in politics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, where he was the recipient of Truman and Fulbright scholarships, as well as of a Mellon Fellowship. His research interests include Zionist history and thought, Israeli constitutional development, and the history and philosophy of higher education.

Mitchell Rocklin is Director of the Jewish Classical Education Concentration track at the University of Dallas and the academic director and dean of the Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education. His prior work on Jewish Classical Education as a research fellow with Tikvah was featured in the Wall Street Journal. He received his Ph.D. in history from the CUNY Graduate Center, held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and Yeshiva University, and taught at both CUNY and Princeton. He is also a chaplain in the Army National Guard with the rank of Major. Rabbi Rocklin is also the president of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, as well as a member of the Rabbinical Council of America’s Executive Committee and Military Chaplaincy Committee. Prior to his work at Tikvah, he served as a congregational rabbi in Connecticut. His writings have been featured in publications including The Los Angeles Times, National Review Online, The Daily Wire, The Forward, The Public Discourse, and Mosaic.

Itamar Rosensweig is a maggid shiur (professor of Jewish law and jurisprudence) at Yeshiva University, a dayan (rabbinic judge) and chaver beit din at the Beth Din of America, and the rav of the Shtiebel of Lower Merion. He holds a secondary appointment as an assistant professor of philosophy at Yeshiva College and serves as the chair of Jewish studies at the Sy Syms School of Business. He received his semikha, Yoreh Yoreh and Yadin Yadin, from RIETS, where he was a fellow of the Wexner Kollel Elyon and editor-in-chief of the Beit Yitzchak Journal of Talmudic and Halakhic Studies.

He received his B.A., with honors, in physics and philosophy from Yeshiva University and an M.A. and Ph.D in medieval Jewish history from YU’s Bernard Revel Graduate School. He also holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.

Benjamin J. Samuels has served as rabbi of Cong. Shaarei Tefillah of Newton Centre since 1995, teaches widely in the Boston Jewish community, and has been a member of the Tikvah Faculty since 2021. He earned his semikhah (rabbinical ordination) from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, holds a Ph.D. in Science, Philosophy, and Religion from Boston University, and received an M.A. in Biblical Studies and Medieval Jewish History, and a B.A. in English Literature from Yeshiva University

Leor Sapir is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston College and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University. Since joining MI, Sapir has become a widely recognized thought leader on topics related to pediatric gender medicine, education policy, and culture. Sapir has offered incisive analysis of the institutional capture of American medical groups on gender medicine, the lack of incentives for evidence-based practices in this area, and the growing divergence between the U.S. and other countries in medical policy. Sapir is a regular contributor to City Journal, and his writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Tablet Magazine, and The Hill.

David Schwartz is a student at Fordham Law School, where he is a staff member of the Fordham Law Review and outgoing Vice President of the Federalist Society. Prior to attending law school, David taught high school English and History for three years as a Teaching Fellow with the Tikvah Fund in several high schools in New Jersey. A graduate of Yeshiva College, David lives in Teaneck with his wife and two daughters.

R.J. Snell is Editor-in-Chief of Public Discourse and Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute. Previously, he was for many years Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern University and the Templeton Honors College, where he founded and directed the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good. He earned his M.A. in philosophy at Boston College, and his Ph.D. in philosophy at Marquette University. His research interests include the liberal arts, ethics, natural law theory, Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and the work of Bernard Lonergan.

Shuli Taubes currently serves on the faculty of SAR High School in Riverdale, New York, where she teaches Tanakh and Jewish Identity, and chairs the Jewish Philosophy department. She has also developed and teaches a curriculum for educating Modern Orthodox high school students in comparative religion. Shuli is a member of the Machon Siach cohort on sexuality where she focuses her research on Jewish sexual ethics and education. For three years, she was the Sopher Community Scholar at the Young Israel of North Riverdale where she gave classes and served in a pastoral role. She is also a kallah (pre-marital) teacher and lectures in synagogues and adult education programs throughout North America. Shuli received her Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Harvard Divinity School and her B.A. in history from Barnard College. Shuli and her family live in New York City.

Tamara Mann Tweel is a Senior Program Director at The Teagle Foundation specializing in civic initiatives. She joined the Foundation in 2019. In this role, she is focused on efforts to strengthen the civic dimension of undergraduate education. Previously, she served as the Founder and Director of Civic Spirit and the Associate Director of the Freedom and Citizenship Program at Columbia University. She serves on the Advisory Council of the Princeton University Office of Religious Life and on the Board of Directors of PACE: Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, an M.A. in theology from the Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. in political philosophy and art history from Duke University.