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Andrew Falk Lectures on American Jewish Foreign Policy in the Era of World Wars

Andrew J. Falk, the 2015 Ruth and David Musher / JDC Archives Fellow, gave his public lecture, “Shadow Diplomats: American Jewish Foreign Policy in the Era of World Wars.” Sparked by a batch of family letters, Falk focused on the ways in which American NGOs and private citizens acted as informal diplomats by raising national awareness of global humanitarian crises, by forming partnerships with policymakers and career diplomats, and by acting as “proxies” for the U.S. government in overseas relief activities.

Andrew J. Falk, PhD, is an associate professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He is the author of Upstaging the Cold War: American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940-1960 (2010), which examines foreign policy dissent as expressed in motion pictures, television, and the theater industries during the early years of the Cold War. He used the fellowship to research how American NGOs and private citizens provided humanitarian assistance to refugees before and during World War II.

The JDC Archives Fellowships allow scholars engaged in graduate level, post-doctoral, or independent study to conduct research in the JDC Archives, either in New York or Jerusalem. All fellows give a public presentation on their research; watch more of these JDC fellowship lectures here.