Judith Goldstein

Translating a vision into action.

Position:Founder and Executive Director, Humanity in Action, Inc.

Judith Goldstein

Article

Dr. Judith S. Goldstein received a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1962 with a concentration on European and American history. As a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Columbia University, she received a Masters degree in European history and wrote her thesis on the “Mouvement Republicain Populaire and the Franco Vietnamese War, 1946-1954.” In 1972, Judith completed her doctoral studies at Columbia University after writing her dissertation on “The Politics of Ethnic Pressure: The American Jewish Committee Fight Against Immigration Restriction: 1906-1917.” This book was republished by Routledge in 2020 and was the beginning of a sustained concentration on immigration and diversity in America and Europe. She worked at Columbia University for 10 years focused on an oral history project on Ethnic Groups and American Foreign Policy. In the late 1980s, she started a book about the integration of Jewish immigrants in Maine. In 1992, William Morrow published Crossing Lines: Histories of Jews and Gentiles in Three Communities. In 2006, Rutger University Press published Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and American Dreams.

Executive Director, Judith Goldstein with civil rights icon, John Lewis

Judith worked as the Executive Director of Thanks To Scandinavia, started by the Danish pianist Victor Borge to acknowledge Scandinavians who resisted Nazism and protected Jews during the Second World War. In 1997, Judith founded Humanity in Action and has served as its Executive Director ever since. Programs have included fellowships and internships in Europe and the United States, annual publications, photography exhibitions, films, and conferences. Over 23 years the organization has engaged over 2,500 college and university students in its programs and raised over $31 million.

Judith serves on the Board of the The Frances Perkins Foundation and the Somes Pond Center, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

She sustains an abiding interest in conservation and landscape design and history, especially as it relates to Maine and Mt. Desert Island.

Publications:

• Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and American Dreams (Rutgers University Press, October, 2006). Read here.
• Crossing Lines: Histories of Jews and Gentiles in Three Communities (William Morrow; March 20, 1992)
• The Politics of Ethnic Pressure: The American Jewish Committee Fight Against Immigration Restriction: 1906-1917, New York (Garland Publishing, 1990; Routledge, 2020). Read here.
• “Anne Frank: the Redemptive Myth,” Partisan Review, vol. 1, 2003. Read here.
• “Alone with Charlotte Salomon,” Partisan Review, vol. 1, 2002.
• “Tragedies and Triumphs: Charles W. Elliot, George B. Door and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and The Founding of Acadia National Park” (Somes Pond Press, 1992). Read here.
• “Patrons of the Public Good: Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Eliot,” Maine Olmsted
• Alliance for Parks and Landscapes, Journal, Winter, 1999 and Autumn, 1999.

 

Updated October 2021

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