Arje Dubnov

Early life and career

Dubnov was born in Petach-Tikvah, Israel, in 1977. He grew up in Afula and later Elkana, an Israeli settlement in the northwestern Samarian hills of the West Bank, before attending the Israel Arts and Science Academy in Jerusalem. His parents had immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and his mother was a Holocaust survivor.

He earned his BA, MA, and PhD in history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a George L. Mosse fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before serving as acting assistant professor at Stanford University and Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa. In 2017, Dubnov became the inaugural holder of the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University, where he also serves as director of the Middle East Program in addition to his role as chair.

Scholarship and research

Dubnov’s scholarship spans intellectual history, Zionism, Empire and decolonization, and comparative nationalism. His work often explores the intersections of liberalism, Jewish identity, and imperial contexts, and he has written extensively on British imperial federalism, the history of Zionism, and the global history of partitions. while political theorist Kei Hiruta described it as “a well-researched and illuminating study that situates Berlin’s thought within the tensions of his Jewish identity and liberal commitments.” However, Aileen Kelly, a historian of Russian intellectual history, criticized the book for downplaying Berlin’s Russian identity, while political scientist Joshua Cherniss characterized it as “an insightful but sometimes overstated attempt to read Berlin through the lens of Jewishness.”

In more recent years, Dubnov's scholarship has made use of the lens of transnational history to examine the Zionist movement, focusing on the movement's connections to the British Empire in particular. Dubnov's work Partitions: A Transnational History of 20th Century Territorial Separatism (2019), which he co-edited with Yale University historian Laura Robson, demonstrates use of this transnational lens in analyzing commonalities between partition practices in Ireland, Palestine, and India-Pakistan across the first half of the 20th century.

Role in AIS dispute (2019)

In 2019, Dubnov was awarded the AIS-Israel Institute Young Scholar Award from the Association for Israel Studies (AIS). However, he declined the award and an invitation to join the AIS board, protesting against the special issue of the journal Israel Studies entitled "Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Dubnov, along with numerous other scholars, criticized the "Word Crimes" issue for blurring the lines between advocacy and scholarship and attempting to police academic debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the controversy, numerous board members resigned and issued a letter of dissent, arguing that the special issue deviated from academic standards and began to stray too far into political advocacy. Following the protest, the co-editors of Israel Studies published a statement acknowledging flaws in the decision-making process, expressing regret, and pledging to implement clear governance and editorial procedures. However, they did not retract the issue, maintaining that such dissent was not "universal."

Personal life

Before serving mandatory time in the Israel Defense Forces, Dubnov volunteered with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI). After serving in a Givati reconnaissance unit in southern Lebanon, he wrote a short story, "48 Ricochets from Lebanon," about his experiences in the IDF.

Active in social and political commentary, Dubnov has expressed criticism of rising anti-intellectualism, fascism, and far-right nationalism in both his home country of Israel and the United States. He has also cited authors Vladimir Nabokov, Elsa Morante, and Meir Shalev, among others, as influences for his work and thought.

Dubnov is distantly related to Jewish-Russian historian, writer, and activist Simon Dubnow, his father's great-uncle.

Awards and honors

AIS-Israel Institute Young Scholar Award (declined)

George L. Mosse Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) Fellowship

Leibniz Institute of European History Fellowship

Dorset Visiting Fellowship, Oxford University

Visiting Fellowship, Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton

Franklin Research Grant, the American Philosophical Society

Selected works

Books Isaiah Berlin: The Journey of a Jewish Liberal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Partitions: A Transnational History of 20th Century Territorial Separatism (co-edited with Laura Robson, Stanford University Press, 2019). Amos Oz’s Two Pens: Between Literature and Politics (Routledge, 2023). Zionism – A New History: The Beginnings of Jewish Nationalism (Lamda/Open University Press, 2025, in Hebrew).

Articles

“Politics of the Comparative Gaze: The Three Languages of Right-Wing Zionist Radicalism,” Palestine/Israel Review (2025). “Nahum Slouschz and the Birth of Hebraic Mediterraneità,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft (2023). “‘I Am Civil War,’ Or: Haim Gouri’s Poetics of Lyrical Concealment,” Dibur: Literary Journal (2023). “The Toynbee Affair at 100: The Birth of ‘World History’ and the Long Shadow of the Interwar Liberal Imaginaire,” Histories (2023). “Can Parallels Meet? Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin on the Jewish Post-Emancipatory Quest for Political Freedom,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book (2017). "'Those New Men of the Sixties': Nihilism in the Liberal Imagination." Rethinking History, vol. 17, no. 1 (2013), 18-40. “Anti-Cosmopolitan Liberalism: Isaiah Berlin, Jacob Talmon and the Dilemma of National Identity,” Nations and Nationalism (2010).