Pacific Northwest Leadership Institute 2026 Faculty
Partial list
Dr. Rosann M. Catalano holds a Doctorate in Philosophy in Systematic Theology from the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto, where she did her major work on the theology of God and the poetry of suffering in the Book of Psalms. She also holds a Master of Arts in Theology and Biblical Studies from the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto, and a Baccalaureate in Theology and Philosophy from Loyola University, Baltimore, MD.
Since 2009, Dr. Catalano has functioned as an independent scholar and educator, teaching Hebrew Bible and New Testament at Beth El and Chizuk Amuno Congregations, both in Baltimore.
From 1994 to 2017, Dr. Catalano was a pivotal figure at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, serving as a scholar of Roman Catholic Christianity, Associate Director, and Director of Programs. Her association with the ICJS continues to this day, as she remains an active independent scholar and educator.
Dr. Catalano also served as an Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Mary's Seminary & University, Baltimore, MD, between 1980 and 1991 and as an Adjunct Professor of Theology at Notre Dame University of Maryland and at The Ecumenical Institute, St. Mary’s Seminary & University.
Dr. Catalano’s ongoing research focuses on the complex relationship between prayer and suffering and the dynamic interplay of emerging Christianity and rabbinic Judaism in the first centuries of the Common Era.
Dr. Catalano is the author of several publications and is a sought-after lecturer for Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic audiences on a variety of biblical, theological, and interfaith topics. Her areas of expertise include the dynamic relationship between suffering and prayer, the origins of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, and the partings of their ways. She is a frequent Weekend Scholar-in-Residence and retreat director.
Dr. Marc Dollinger holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University.
He has served as research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, where he coordinated the program in Jewish Studies.
Professor Dollinger is author of four scholarly books in American Jewish history, most recently Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing The Alliance in the 1960s. He has published entries in the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Encyclopedia of Antisemitism, and the Encyclopedia of African American Education. His next project, an academic memoir titled Laundering Antisemitism: Identity Politics, Ethnic Studies, and the University, Jewish Publication Society, traces his experiences as an identified Jewish (and Zionist) professor in the current political climate.
Dr. Dollinger currently serves on the executive board of the Union for Reform Judaism. He is also board president of URJ Camp Newman. Professor Dollinger is a past president of both the Jewish Community High School of the Bay and Brandeis Hillel Day School. He also currently serves on the boards of the American Jewish Historical Society where he chairs the academic council and the Judah Magnes Museum Foundation. He sat on the California advisory committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was named Volunteer of the Year by the SF Jewish Community Federation, and was awarded the San Francisco JCRC’s Courageous Leader award.
Professor Dollinger has spoken about his research with the CEO of the NAACP on CNN as well as the CNN-podcast “Silence Is Not An Option,” the NFL Network, ESPN, and Germany’s National Public Radio. Just for fun, Dr. Dollinger helped actress Helen Hunt learn about her Jewish roots on the prime-time NBC show, “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Christopher M. Leighton is the founding director of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies (Baltimore, Maryland) where he served for thirty-three years. Over the course of his tenure, the ICJS provided an educational forum where scholars, clergy, and lay leaders explored the complex interplay of Christians, Jews and Muslims, with particular attention to dialogical inquiries that confront the differences and distortions that have pitted our religious communities against one another. He co-edited Talking About Genesis, the study guide for Bill Moyers’ Genesis series. He worked closely with the Jewish scholars who crafted Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity, and the companion works Christianity in Jewish Terms and Irreconcilable Differences. During 2010-2012, he worked with the Institute for Theological Inquiry on a project examining the relationship between religion and violence, and his essay on Cain and Abel is published in Plowshares into Swords? He is the author of the recent book, A Sacred Argument: Dispatches from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Encounter published by Wipf & Stock in 2024.
He is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and did his doctoral work in Philosophy and Education at Columbia University—Teachers College. He was awarded a Klingenstein Fellowship at Columbia. He is the recipient of Loyola College’s the Andrew White Award, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by St. Mary’s Seminary and University.
Mark Rotenberg serves as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Hillel International and oversees Hillel's Campus Climate Initiative, a program that engages thousands of university leaders to ensure a campus environment for Jewish students free from discrimination and harassment. Mark has spent most of his professional career on university campuses, serving for many years as the general counsel at the University of Minnesota and at Johns Hopkins University. A seasoned university educator, Mark currently is an Adjunct Professor of Law at American University in Washington, has taught at the University of Minnesota for over 20 years, and was a visiting professor of law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Mark was a partner at the Dorsey & Whitney law firm in Minneapolis and special counsel at WilmerHale in Washington. He has argued and won cases in the US Supreme Court and many other judicial forums. Mark received his B.A. from Brandeis University, and M.A., M.Phil., and J.D. from Columbia Law School and Columbia University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. 
Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary antisemitism, the author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide, and a sought-after speaker and lecturer.
She is a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC; senior fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities in Palo Alto; and a fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa.
A contributing writer at Tablet, she has also published in Newsweek, Sapir, Quillette, The National Interest, Fathom, The Forward, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Her essays have appeared in several edited volumes, including October 7: The Wars over Words and Deeds (Academic Studies Press); The Rebirth of Antisemitism in the 21st Century: From the Academic Boycott Campaign into the Mainstream (Routledge); Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays(Routledge); Sionismo y antisionismo: Un debate necesario (RiL editores); and Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People (Wicked Son). Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, Czech, and other languages.