Rabbi Andrew Baker
- Director of International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
In his current position, Rabbi Baker is responsible for maintaining and developing AJC’s network of relationships with Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora and addressing the accompanying international issues and concerns. From 1992 until 2000, he served as AJC’s Director of European Affairs. In 2003 he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his work in German-Jewish relations. Rabbi Baker is a Vice President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Jewish umbrella organization that has worked on restitution issues for half a century. He is a member of the National Historical Commission of Lithuania and has been a key player in negotiating the return of Torah scrolls and Jewish communal properties from that country. In 2006 the President of Lithuania presented him with the Officer’s Cross of Merit for his work.He was also instrumental during the period of NATO enlargement in pressing the Government of Latvia to address its Holocaust-era past. In recognition of these efforts, he was awarded the Order of the Three Stars by the President of Latvia in 2007. He helped the Romanian Government establish a national commission chaired by Elie Wiesel to examine the history of the Holocaust in that country, and serves as one of its founding members. In May 2006 Rabbi Baker was appointed by the Prime Minister of Poland to a six year term on the International Auschwitz Council, the official governmental body that oversees the preservation efforts of that memorial site. Rabbi Baker received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City.
Mark B. Levin
- Executive Director of The National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ)
Mark B. Levin has served in his current position at the NCSJ since 1992. He is one of the organized Jewish community’s leading experts on national and international political and legislative issues. In November 2008, Mr. Levin was the Soviet Jewry Freedom Award recipient at the Boston-based Russian Jewish Community Foundation's annual gala. In September 2008, Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko awarded him the Order of Merit medal in New York City. And, in June 2006, Mr. Levin was honored for 25 years of distinguished service with NCSJ at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Mr. Levin has served three times as a Public Member of the U.S. Delegation to meetings of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE): the October 2004 Human Dimensions Implementation Meeting, in Warsaw, the June 2003 Conference on Anti-Semitism, in Vienna, and the November 1994 Review Meeting, in Budapest. In addition, Mr. Levin has represented NCSJ at many other OSCE meetings, and served as a Public Advisor for the U.S. Delegation to the OSCE's April 2004 Berlin Conference on Anti-Semitism. Mr. Levin is a leader in the organized Jewish community effort to support financial and technical assistance to the former Soviet Union, and has traveled extensively, representing NCSJ and the Soviet Jewry advocacy movement. He organized the First International Parliamentary Spouses for Soviet Jews Conference in Washington, DC. Mr. Levin played an instrumental role in the creation of the Congressional Coalition for Soviet Jews – one of the largest Congressional caucuses ever formed.
Prior to coming to NCSJ, he worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Mr. Levin is a graduate of the University of Maryland.
Sammy Eppel
- Consultant and Political Columnist, Venezuela
Sammy Eppel is a Venezuelan consultant and political columnist. Since 1994, he has been publishing opinion pieces in the Venezuelan and international media. He first began writing for the newspaper El Mundo, and most recently for El Universal, and the websites www.Analítica.com and www.NoticieroDigital.com. Internationally, he is the World Press Review correspondent, and whose English opinion pieces are published on the website www.worldpress.org, and also in the Miami Herald. Eppel is a member of the Inter-American Press Association and frequently appears as a guest commentator on various radio and television programs.
Michael Schneider
- Secretary General, World Jewish Congress
Michael Schneider served as Executive Vice-President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) from December 1987 until May 2002. In this capacity he directed one of JDC's largest operations in the field of Rescue, Relief and Reconstruction. Schneider began his career with JDC in 1978 after ten years of service as Chief Welfare Officer of the London Jewish Welfare Board. Schneider served as Director-General of JDC's Israel office from 1983 through 1987 when he moved to New York to become JDC's chief professional officer. Michael Schneider stepped down as Chief Executive Officer in May 2002 to return to the field. He assumed the title of Hon. Executive Vice-President. He serves as a member of the Claims Conference Allocations Committee. He directed JDC's tsunami relief programs in Indonesia and an AIDS-related program in South Africa. He is chairman of the finance committee of Limmud (Former Soviet Union.) He serves on the boards of the Abraham and Sonia Rochlin Foundation and the Chais Family Foundation for Jewish Education. In July 2005, he was named Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour for life time humanitarian services. Michael Schneider was appointed as Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress, in September 2007.
David Matas
- Senior Legal Counsel to B'nai Brith Canada
David Matas is an internationally renowned refugee, immigration and human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg. A former President of the Canadian Council of Refugees, he is also active in such organizations as Amnesty International, Helsinki Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists. He has represented B’nai Brith in many international fora, such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He is an accomplished author of several highly acclaimed publications, amongst them Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada (1987) with Susan Charendoff; Closing the Doors: The Failure of Refugee Protection (1989) with Ilana Simon; and Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech (2000). His latest work is entitled Aftershook: Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism (2005). He has received numerous awards and honours, including an honourary doctorate from Concordia University.
Dr. Andre Oboler
- Director of Online Engagement at the Zionist Federation of Australia
Dr. Andre Oboler is a researcher, commentator and social media expert with a focus on online antisemitism and internet issues impacting the Jewish people and Israel. In addition to his current position at the Zionist Federation of Australia, he is also a consultant for Australia's B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission and Editor of Zionism On The Web - a website countering on-line hate. Since coining the term 'Antisemitism 2.0' at the 2008 edition of the Global Forum Conference for Combating Antisemitism (hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel) Dr. Oboler's research has examined antisemitism in Facebook, YouTube, Google-Earth, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Yahoo Groups, as well as issues related to the spread of hate through search engines. Dr Oboler's latest paper is on policy changes in Facebook which removed specific protection against racial and religious discrimination and mis-classified Holocaust denial as 'not hate' as a matter of policy. Dr Oboler holds a PhD in computer science from Lancaster University (UK) and
an honours degree in computer science from Monash University (Australia), and completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship in Political Science at Bar-Ilan University (Israel). He is a former: Legacy Heritage Fellow at NGO Monitor (Israel), National Secretary of UJS (UK) and Deputy on the Board of Deputies (UK).
Dr. Mitchell Bard
- Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE).
In addition to his current position at the AICE, Dr. Mitchell Bard also serves as a foreign policy analyst who lectures frequently on U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Bard is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, the world’s most comprehensive online encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture. For three years he was the editor of the Near East Report, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) weekly newsletter on U.S. Middle East policy. Prior to working at AIPAC, Dr. Bard served as a senior analyst in the polling division of the 1988 Bush campaign. Dr. Bard is a member of a number of speakers bureaus, including the UJC, Hillel, Israel Bonds and the Jewish National Fund. He is also represented by the Harry Walker Agency. Dr. Bard has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, CBC, the Jenny Jones Show, al-Jazeera and other local and national television and radio outlets. His work has been published in academic journals, magazines and major newspapers. He is the author of 18 books.
Prof. Gil Troy
- Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal and a Visiting Scholar affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.
Gil Troy is a native of Queens, New York. He received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. After receiving his Ph. D in History in 1988, he taught History and Literature at Harvard for two years. In September 1990, Troy became an assistant professor of history at McGill University. In 1995, Troy was promoted to Associate Professor and granted tenure. From 1997 to 1998 he served as chairman of McGill's history department. In March, 1999 he was promoted to Full Professor. His latest book Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents will be published this June by Basic Books. This spring the University Press of Kansas released the paperback edition of his book Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady, having been published in hard cover in 2006. Troy is the author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s, published in 2005 by Princeton University Press and released in paperback in 2007. It has been called a "masterly study of Ronald Reagan's presidency - the best single book we have on his administration to date." His two other works in American history were Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons (2000) - first published by The Free Press as Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II and See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate, originally published by the Free Press in 1991, then released in an updated paperback edition by Harvard University Press in 1997. Troy is also the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. The book has been hailed as a "must read," and the most persuasive presentation of the Zionist case "in decades."
Michael Whine
- Government and International Affairs Director at the Community Security Trust, the defense agency of the UK Jewish community.
In conjunction with is current position, Mike Whine also serves as Defense and Group Relations Director of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative body of the community. He is also a consultant on antisemitism to the European Jewish Congress, which he represents at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). He has been engaged in researching antisemitism and extremism for twenty years.
Dr. Michael Kotzin
- Executive Vice President of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago
Dr. Michael Kotzin first joined the Jewish United Federation in 1988 as Director of its Jewish Community Relations Council and has held his current position since 1999. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota. From 1968 to 1979 he was a faculty member at Tel Aviv University, and he then served on the staff of the Anti-Defamation League for nine years. Dr. Kotzin is a frequent spokesman for Chicago’s Jewish community. A respected authority on Jewish communal affairs, particularly Israel-related issues and anti-Semitism, he has participated in many national and international conferences on these subjects and has spearheaded the formation of several notable structures aimed at addressing these issues locally and nationally. He plays a particularly active role on university campuses and in the broader community in promoting understanding and awareness of the new anti-Semitism and in framing and implementing effective responses. Publications include a book on the novels of Charles Dickens, a monograph on “The New Anti-Semitism: Sources, Symbols, and Significance,” and many articles and columns in scholarly journals, the daily press, and Jewish community publications. Dr. Kotzin serves on the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Hate Crimes Prosecution Council and formerly served on the Illinois Governor’s Commission on Hate Crimes and Discrimination.