Professor of

Jewish Studies

and Sociology

Shaul Kelner is Professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Vanderbilt University, and past director of Vanderbilt’s Program in Jewish Studies.

He is the author of the National Jewish Book Award-winning A Cold War Exodus, about activism to free Soviet Jews. His first book, Tours That Bind, a study of Birthright Israel, won a awards from the Association for Jewish Studies and American Sociological Association.

Prof. Kelner has been a fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a visiting scholar at Tel Aviv University, and a fellow of the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies. He has served as a board member of the Association for Jewish Studies and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry. He received his Ph.D in 2002 from the CUNY Graduate Center, which he attended as a Wexner Graduate Fellow.

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science recognized him with an Innovative Teaching Award for Creating Engaging In-Person Learning Environments.