Doron Ben-Atar

Doron Ben-Atar (; born 25 May 1957) is an Israeli-born American historian and playwright. He is a professor of history at Fordham University in New York City.

Biography Doron Ben-Atar was born in Kfar Shmaryahu, Israel. His father, Arye Ben-Atar, immigrated to Mandatory Palestine from Turkey in 1936. He was a basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv. His mother is a Holocaust survivor from Poland. In 2006, Ben-Atar wrote a play based on his mother's experiences, Behave Yourself Quietly. He claims U.S. economic development was founded on the illegal misappropriation of intellectual property.

Business World India calls him "a genial giant from the world of academia" who has undermined conventional arguments in the hotly debated question of who owns intellectual property by looking at the issue through the prism of the past. Christine MacLeod of Bristol University wrote "Doron S. Ben-Atar wears his heart on his sleeve. It's a good heart, but historically the wrong sleeve."

His work on intellectual policy builds on his earlier work on Thomas Jefferson. He criticized Jefferson for vacillating between viewing commerce as a threat to republican virtue and recognizing the necessity of promoting prosperity. As a result, Jefferson "failed to recognize America's larger stake in defeating Napoleonic France."

Playwrighting career After Behave Yourself Quietly, Ben-Atar wrote Peace Warriors about what he perceives as the demonization of Israel in the academic world.

Published works

Books Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power (Yale University Press, 2004) What Time and Sadness Spared: Mother and Son Confront the Holocaust together with Roma Nutkiewicz Ben-Atar (University of Virginia Press, 2006) The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy (Macmillan, 1993) Federalists Reconsidered, co-edited with Barbara B. Oberg (University Press of Virginia, 1998)

Selected articles "Pirates of the Potomac," Legal Affairs (2004) "Pride, Ambition and Resentment: The American Revolution Revisited," for the Oxford History of the British Empire (2000) "The Jewish American Question," Journal of Urban History (1999) "Nationalism, Neo-Mercantilism, and Diplomacy: Rethinking the Franklin Mission," Diplomatic History (1998).