These are the biographies and statements of the candidates for the open board positions. Please read them and proceed to the ballot at the bottom of the page.

President: Steven M. Cohen

Steven M. Cohen is Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at HUC-JIR, and Director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner. In 1992 he made aliyah, and taught for 14 years at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
With Arnold Eisen, he wrote, The Jew Within, and with Charles Liebman he wrote, Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American Experiences. His earlier books include American Modernity & Jewish Identity, and American Assimilation or Jewish Revival? He was the lead researcher on the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011.
In 2011, he received an honorary doctorate from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. In 2010, he received the Marshall Sklare Award of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry and was cited as one of the Forward Fifty (for the second time). The book, Sacred Strategies, of which he is a co-author, won a National Jewish Book Award in 2010.
He is married to Rabbi Marion Lev-Cohen, and they live in Jerusalem and New York. His daughter, Edeet, recently completed a year at the Israel State Prosecutor’s office, and his son Adam lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

Candidate's statement: Were I to be privileged and honored to serve as president of our Association, I would work for the following objectives, all of which build upon Harriet’s extraordinary work over the last several years.
1) We need to advance the academic careers of our younger members, particularly recently "minted" Ph.D.s. Among the issues: creating jobs; securing placements; featuring people at appropriate venues; collaborative projects and collaborative publishing. We all do some of this; and we all can do more.
2) Furthering high-quality academic discourse and good-spirited debate and commentary. My sense is that we could do much better in this realm. We can do more to exchange and review ideas and manuscripts in progress; and we can do better at developing the appropriate norms of collegial critique.
3) Enriching the nexus between the worlds of thought, policy and practice. Here we’ve made a signal contribution to the society around us and our work has been enriched thereby. Yet, here too, opportunities exist for using those good relationships to provide support for good scholarship, publication, and the policy-relevant exchange of ideas.
4) Give consideration to devoting a year to specific areas of research, that will serve as the focus for conferences, special issues of Contemporary Jewry, fund-raising, etc. We can select the area on the basis of recently published work (ours or others’) or on the basis of interest and prospects for fruitful development. Illustrative possibilities (with apologies to everyone with other ideas): Social networks; Economic perspectives on Jewish life; Secularism; and Hybrid identities.
5) Devoting some time to reflecting on some big issues. Examples: The state of our profession, or Moral questions in Jewish communal policy and implications for researchers.
6) Attend to expanding the subscription base for Contemporary Jewry. (Innovative and effective ideas welcome!)
In general, transitions are ideal times to think anew. I would hope that come December, whoever will be succeeding Harriet, will have the opportunity to conduct these sorts of conversations. I, of course, at this stage of my personal and professional life, am eager to have that opportunity.

Vice-President: Sergio DellaPergola

Sergio DellaPergola, born in Italy, has lived in Israel since 1966. He holds a Ph.D. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the Shlomo Argov Professor Emeritus of Israel-Diaspora Relations at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and the Institute's former Chairman. An internationally known specialist on the demography of world Jewry, he published numerous books (including Israele e Palestina: La forza dei numeri: Il conflitto mediorientale fra demografia e politica, 2007, and Jewish Demographic Policies: Population Trends and Options in Israel and the Diaspora, 2011) and over two hundred papers on historical demography, the family, international migration, Jewish identification, and population projections in the Diaspora and in Israel.
He lectured at over 60 universities and research centers worldwide, including Brown, UCLA, Illinois at Chicago, Brandeis, Columbia, Universidad Nacional in Buenos Aires, USP in Sao Paolo, UNAM, El Colegio de Mexico and Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Oxford, SOAS in London, Paris V and INED in Paris, Pavia, Milano, Rome, Florence, The European University Institute, Moscow, Cape Town, and served as senior policy consultant to the President of Israel, the Israeli Government, the Jerusalem Municipality, and many major national and international organizations. In 1999 he won the Marshall Sklare Award for distinguished achievement from the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

Candidate's statement: I have been a member of ASSJ for very many years, serving in the Board as appointed Israeli representative for the last 15 years or so. While it is about time to let my "regional" seat to younger forces, I wish to continue offering ASSJ my professional experience and the insights accumulated through research in many countries. I believe that ASSJ, while eminently centered in the United States, should expand its membership all across the other continents, reflecting globalization patterns that significantly affect the contemporary Jewish experience, and anticipating more intensive intellectual exchanges among interested social scientists.

Secretary: Matthew Boxer

Matthew Boxer is a research associate at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute and a lecturer in the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University. His current work varies widely and includes socio-demographic research on the Jewish community in the United States, the social psychological processes of Jewish identity development, Jewish young adults’ volunteer habits and preferences, Israel studies on college campuses in the United States and Canada, the impact of formal and informal Jewish educational experiences on Jewish identity, and the effect of Jewish community size on Jewish identity. Matt previously served for six years as the graduate student representative to the ASSJ board and oversaw the ASSJ’s elections in 2010 and 2011.

Candidate's statement:  At the request of the nominating committee, I am pleased to be considered for the position of secretary of the ASSJ. As a sociologist of North American Jewry and Israel with a longstanding association with the ASSJ, I recognize the vital role the organization plays in promoting scholarly cooperation among scholars with shared interest in the social scientific study of Jewry. The ASSJ is instrumental in bridging our disparate disciplines, geographical and institutional settings, and career stages, as well as applying our work for the benefit of the Jewish community and promoting it within the wider community of social science researchers. If elected, I will do my best to continue Ted Sasson’s excellent work in maintaining the correspondence, official records, and website of the ASSJ.

Treasurer: Bruce Phillips

Bruce Phillips is Professor of Sociology and Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He has been doing Jewish sociology since 1975 when he received his PhD from UCLA and was among the first researchers to apply RDD to Jewish population studies.

Candidate's statement:  I took over as ASSJ treasurer last year and would like to continue so as (1) to capitalize on the time investment in learning the system and (2) prepare documentation for future treasurers.

Board Member-at-Large: Barry Chiswick

Barry R. Chiswick is Professor of Economics and International Affairs and Chair of the Department of Economics at the George Washington University. He has done extensive research on the Economic Status of American Jewry from the late 19th Century to the present, as well as on the adjustment of Jewish immigrants in the United States and Israel. His Jewish Studies research has focused on the comparative analyses of the occupational status, earnings and destination language proficiency of Jews and Jewish immigrants. It has been published in refereed journals in Economics, Jewish Studies, Sociology and Migration. He was the 2007 recipient of the ASSJ Marshall Skare Award, and his Sklare Lecture "The Rise and Fall of the American Jewish PhD" was published in Contemporary Jewry. He was also the recipient of the 2011 Prize in Labor Economics awarded by the Institute for the Study of Labor. Prof Chiswick is a frequent visitor to Israel and has had research or teaching appointments and given seminars in Israel at the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, University of Haifa, Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University, and the Ruppin Institute. He has had a Fulbright Research Fellowship that he took at the Hebrew University.

Candidate's statement: I have been an active member of the Jewish Studies community, has had a long involvement with ASSJ, having served previously on the ASSJ Board of Directors, and is on the editorial board of Contemporary Jewry. I have had had extensive university administrative experience.

I am concerned about two interrelated issues.

One is the paucity of recent data that includes sufficient sample sizes and relevant variables on Jews. In spite of --or perhaps because of-- the increasing complexity of the issues we need to start the process for another National Jewish Population Survey, as well as work to have larger sample sizes ( over sampling ) of Jews and relevant questions in general social science surveys.

The other is the aging of the membership of the ASSJ and the population of Social Scientists who study Jews, either as their full time research programs or those who do it in addition to other research projects. Encouraging sessions on Jews at Social Science professional association meetings would be very helpful.

Board Member-at-Large: Randal Schnoor

I am a sociologist, teaching at the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University in Toronto. For the last eight years I have been teaching a course which I created on the sociology of contemporary North American Jewish life, which places particular emphasis on the comparisons between the American and Canadian experience. I am the co-author of a book entitled "Back to School: Jewish day school as a source of meaning in the lives of adult Jews" (Wayne State University Press, 2008) and am currently working on a follow-up book with Alex Pomson which examines the mechanisms through which Jewish families change as they move through the life course. I am also currently involved in a long-term British team research project exploring the Jewish identity constructions of British families (based in London and Manchester) with school-age children. Since 2005 I have served as president of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies.

Candidate's statement:I was pleased to have the opportunity to serve on the board of the ASSJ from 2009-2011. As part of my work on the board I guest-edited a special volume of our association's journal, 'Contemporary Jewry' (October, 2001) on the subject of Canadian Jewish life and set up an ASSJ webinar in April, 2012 to highlight the findings of this volume. I welcome the opportunity to serve on the board again. I am particularly interested in promoting our association internationally and engaging graduate students and emerging scholars.