Ruth Wisse

Ruth Wisse (; ; ; born May 13, 1936) is a Canadian academic and political activist. She is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University emerita. Wisse is a scholar of Yiddish literature and of Jewish history and culture.

Wisse is an outspoken Zionist. Some have called her political views neoconservative. In 2026, The Wall Street Journal called Wisse the "Iron Lady of the American Jewish Right".

Background and family Wisse was born into a Jewish family in Czernowitz (then part of Romania, now part of Ukraine) and grew up in Montreal. She earned her MA from Columbia University and, in 1969, her PhD from McGill University. She is the sister of David G. Roskies, professor of Yiddish and Jewish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Academic career Wisse, whose doctorate was in literature, is described by Edward Alexander as one of a group of scholars who earned PhDs in English literature in the 1960s and moved into Jewish Studies in the 1970s and 1980s, applying the modern critical methods of literary scholarship to Yiddish and Hebrew texts.

Wisse has taught at McGill, Stanford, New York, Hebrew and Tel Aviv universities. While teaching at McGill she developed a "pioneering" graduate program in Jewish studies. In 1993, she left McGill to teach at Harvard.

According to one critic, Wisse's work is characterized "by the sharpness of her insight, by her unwillingness to retreat from a skirmish and by the inability of even those who disagree with her to deny her brilliance." She received one of the 2007 National Humanities Medals. The award cited her for "scholarship and teaching that have illuminated Jewish literary traditions. Her insightful writings have enriched our understanding of Yiddish literature and Jewish culture in the modern world."

She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books and a frequent contributor to Commentary. She dedicated her last book, Jews and Power, to the editor, Neal Kozodoy.

Yiddish literature Of The Best Of Sholem Aleichem, a collection of short stories by Sholem Aleichem Wisse edited with Irving Howe, Joyce Carol Oates wrote, "Like all good anthologies... more than simply a heterogeneous collection of pieces linked by common theme or author: it is also a statement, an argument, an attempt at redefinition."

Schlemiel The Schlemiel as a Modern Hero, Wisse's first book, a rewriting of her doctoral dissertation "in a vigorously fresh and witty style", is about the schlemiel as both a type and a literary genre with its origins in the Yiddish literature in the period of Jewish emancipation.

Jewish history Wisse has published notable books and essays on contemporary Jewish history, including If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992) and Jews and Power (2008).

Political views Wisse's politics have generally been described as neoconservative.

Wisse has advocated traditional marriage and gender roles, criticized Jewish involvement in communism, and discussed Jewish culpability in crimes committed under communist regimes. Her criticism of the women's liberation movement as a form of neo-Marxism has been extensively cited by critics of radical feminist politics. She wrote:

Wisse is a Zionist. In May 2014, a profile of Wisse in The Forward called her "one of the most forceful conservative voices in support of Israel, arguing that criticism of the state repeats ingrained habits of Jewish accommodationism and self-blame." She has described the Arab-Israeli conflict as an "Arab war against Israel" rather than a bilateral conflict.

Wisse has been criticized for writing that Palestinians are "people who breed and bleed and advertise their misery". In 1988, Alexander Cockburn wrote about Wisse's frustration with the discomfort American Jewish intellectuals felt regarding violence against Palestinians.

In September 2010, in the midst of Harvard University's decision to cancel a speech by Marty Peretz after he wrote "Muslim life is cheap, especially to other Muslims", Wisse condemned "Groupthink" at Harvard and defended Peretz, saying, "to wish that Muslims would condemn the violence in their midst is not bigotry but liberality". Wisse is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.

In a November 2016 interview, Wisse said she voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election despite his being "16th on [her preferred] list of Republican candidates for president". She endorsed Trump for reelection in 2020 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Books Free As A Jew, A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation (2021). Post Hill Press.

52nd Jefferson Lecture