Marjorie N. Feld is an American historian, Professor of History at Babson College, and former Chair of the History and Society Division. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University and specializes in American Jewish history, labor history, gender studies, and social movement history. Her research examines how American Jewish social ethics have intersected with foreign policy, civil rights, and anti-colonial movements.
Feld is the author of three major historical monographs. Her early work, Lillian Wald: A Biography (2008), which won the Saul Viener Book Prize from the American Jewish Historical Society, explored the intersection of progressive Jewish ethics and early 20th-century public health reform. In Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle Over Apartheid (2014), she analyzed intracommunal debates among American Jews regarding South African apartheid. Her 2024 monograph, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism (NYU Press), traces a century of non-Zionist and anti-Zionist thought within American Jewry, documenting how institutional consensus around Israel was historically constructed and challenged. In August 2016, Feld and prominent historian Hasia Diner published a widely discussed op-ed in Haaretz, titled “We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind,” in which they publicly detailed their ideological departure from Zionism.
In addition to her monograph research, Feld serves on the Academic Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and participates in the Concerned Jewish Faculty network. Her public scholarship focuses on academic freedom, opposition to unrestricted military aid, and the historic depth of Jewish dissent regarding Israeli state policy. Her more recent academic work includes research as an international fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, where she examines the history of the sustainable Jewish farming movement in North America.