Jonathan Dekel-Chen

Focus Areas: International Relations, Informal Diplomacy, Transnational Advocacy, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Migration

Before his appointment as a Visiting Professor at SIPA, Jonathan Dekel-Chen served as the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he held a dual appointment in the Department of Jewish History & Contemporary Jewry and in the Department of General History. His current research and publications deal with modern Jewish history, modern Israel, transnational philanthropy and advocacy, informal diplomacy, agrarian history and migration. He served from 2007-2019 as the Academic Chairman of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian & East European Jewry and Chairman of the Russian Studies Department from 2006-2008, 2016-2020.

Dekel-Chen has been a frequent commentator and interviewee on East European affairs and the Middle East for media outlets that include the BBC, AP, Reuters, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Radio France, the Voice of America and many others. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC and at the Harriman Institute in New York.

In 2014 he co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Performing Arts in Eshkol, which provides world-class artistic training for under-served high school students from throughout Israel.

Prof. Dekel-Chen is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, situated on the border with the Gaza Strip. On October 7, 2023 Hamas attacked his kibbutz, resulting in the massacre of dozens of its members, the captivity of many dozens more as well as the physical destruction and looting of Nir Oz. His 37 year-old son Sagui, a father of three young girls, was among the hostages taken from Nir Oz; he was released in February 2025.

Dekel-Chen advocated in the US and Israel for release of the hostages, including many meetings with senior officials in both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as members of Congress, faith leaders and major international organizations. During those two years he made hundreds of media appearances to inform the public about the plight of the hostages and to sustain pressure on the relevant governments.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen joined SIPA as a Visiting Professor in July 2026. He will teach one class a year dealing with international relations, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and informal diplomacy. He will also teach one class a year at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia. His work at SIPA will feature public-facing initiatives that are an outcome of the horrors of October 7 and what came after. In his words, "Since October 7 I’ve undergone a convergence between my scholarship and teaching with personal practice of informal diplomacy and transnational advocacy." 

Education

• Lady Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Ph.D. in Comparative History, Brandeis University
• B.A. in International Relations & Russian and Slavic Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem