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Meet The Director

The Jewish Studies Program and Center Professor Mark W. Rosenblum Director of the Jewish Studies Program and Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College Professor Mark W. Rosenblum is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Understanding (CERRU), as well as Director of the Michael Harrington Center for Democratic Values.  Most recently Professor Rosenblum has been named “Scholar in Residence,” and serves as Director of the Ibrahim Queens College Student Scholar Middle East Leadership and Dialogue Program, which includes Saudi Arabia and Israel as bookends to an immersion in Middle East culture and society. The author of numerous scholarly and popular articles on his field of expertise, the Middle East, Professor Rosenblum has appeared as a Middle East analyst on CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. He has met with virtually all the major players in the region, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, King Abdullah II, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He has met with the past six presidents of the U.S. and President Obama.  His project, “The Middle East and America: Clash of Civilizations or Meeting of Minds,” seeks modes of reconciliation for all interested in the Middle East, and recently won a major Ford Foundation grant. He was also one of two winners of an award in the field of Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation by the Clinton Global Initiative. In 1999 the Forward newspaper named Professor Rosenblum as one of the 50 most influential American Jews, and in 2003 he received the Queens College President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dr. Diane R. Spielmann, Ph.D. Associate Director Diane Spielmann, returning to Queens College in the fall of 2010 with a long-standing career in Jewish Studies and administration, is currently Associate Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. A Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Queens College, she has a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literature with a focus on Jewish Studies. Prior to her current appointment, she was the Director of Public Services at the Center for Jewish History (CJH) in New York, after serving as the Public Services and Development Coordinator, as well as Reference Specialist at the Leo Baeck Institute, one of the five CJH partner organizations. Additionally, Dr. Spielmann was an adjunct faculty member in the European Languages Department and the Jewish Studies program at Queens College. She has lectured and published in German-Jewish Studies and the Holocaust. Her various publications include “German-Jewish Writers” on the Eve of the Holocaust” in Reflections of the Holocaust in Art and Literature, edited by Randoph L. Braham, Boulder, Social Science Monographs, 1990; “November 1990” in A Sense of Loss and Nostalgia: Encounters with the German-Jewish Past and Present,” Brochure Series of American Jewish Archives, No. XI (Jacob Marcus Rader),Cincinnati, OH, 1992, “The Triumph and Tragedy of Joseph Schmidt,” in The Jewish Experience, edited by Ben Soskis, New York, Center for Jewish History, 2004.