Hasia R. Diner is an American historian and Professor Emerita of American Jewish History at New York University (NYU), where she previously directed the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History. Raised in a traditional Jewish home in Milwaukee, she was active in her youth in the socialist Zionist youth movement Habonim. She earned her doctorate at the University of Illinois and specialized in American immigration history, urban history, and the American Jewish experience.
Diner has written extensively on Jewish social history and cultural memory, authoring over twenty books. Her major publications include “In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915–1935” (1977), “Lower East Side Memories: A Material Culture History of American Jewish Life” (2000), and “The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000” (2004). Her 2009 study, “We Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962,” received the National Jewish Book Award by demonstrating that American Jewish communities developed active Holocaust memorialization prior to the 1967 War, challenging narratives that position Israel as the primary anchor of modern Jewish consciousness.
In 2016, Diner co-authored a widely cited op-ed in Haaretz with Marjorie Feld,”We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind“, formally severing her connection to Zionism. Describing her earlier belief in a progressive Zionist state as a “naive delusion,” she criticized Israel’s Law of Return as inherently discriminatory against Palestinians and announced a personal boycott of Israel in protest of occupation policies and territorial displacement.
Diner’s scholarship critiques Israel-centric models of Jewish identity, asserting the validity and ethical independence of Diaspora culture. Despite institutional criticism following her public statements, she continues to write and mentor academics on the historiography of the Nakba, Jewish anti-Zionism, and freedom of expression in academic institutions.