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Jacques Berlinerblau.

Professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown, failed jazz musician, expat Brooklynite.

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BOOKS BY BERLINERBLAU

Berlinerblau's Bio

Welcome! Thank you for visiting the personal, not-entirely-academic, website of Jacques Berlinerblau (pictured at right, staring blankly at a potentially turbulent horizon). Berlinerblau is a Professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University and an MSNBC opinion columnist. He considers himself an undergraduate teacher first and foremost, and has urged his colleagues to embrace that identity as well. 

Describing his particular discipline is a bit of a trek. He possesses separate doctorates in sociology and ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. Our fellow was tenured as a Professor of Comparative Literature and eventually directed a unit devoted to the study of Jewish Civilization. So what does that make him? A sociologist? A scholar of (meta-)fiction? Both? Neither? Something else? Mystery!

Berlinerblau toggles between “pure” academic writing and more public-facing endeavors. In terms of the latter, he has written for, appeared on, or had his work discussed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Salon, The GuardianThe New Republic, The Nation, NPR, Tablet, CommentaryThe Forward, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Canadian Broadcast Network, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Al-JazeeraTimes Higher Education, The Daily Beast, New York Magazine, The Hill, PBS, MSNBC, CBS, CBC, TF1, AFP, and CNN.

To this point, he has authored eight academic books, two trade books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Melville House), and more than thirty scholarly articles. In recent years Berlinerblau has spent most of his time researching secularism, defining secularism, and arguing about secularism with those on the Left and on the Right. In addition, he has written much about literature and aesthetics on the one hand, and religion and politics on the other. His most recent project (co-authored with Professor Terrence Johnson) explored what is known as "Black-Jewish relations," though the authors find that shorthand to be very problematic! His next project focuses on comedy, blasphemy, and global affairs. He lives in Washington DC and sometimes writes about himself in the third-person.

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Literature, jazz, Comedy

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SECULARISM

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Jewish Americans/
African Americans

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HIGHER EDUCATION

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION

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