Leonard Saxe, PhD
Director, Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies
Director, Steinhardt Social Research Institute
Leonard Saxe is Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Social Policy at Brandeis University. He is also the director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University.
Professor Saxe is an experimental social psychologist concerned with the application of social science to social policy issues. His present focus is on religious and ethnic identity, in particular issues relevant to the Jewish community.
Professor Saxe's current Jewish community research involves studies of antisemitism, socio-demographic analyses of American Jewry, and a program of research on Jewish education and its relationship to Jewish engagement. He is the principal investigator of a longitudinal study of the impact of Birthright Israel. At the Steinhardt Institute, he is leading a program that is investigating the size and characteristics of the American Jewish population.
Professor Saxe is an author and/or editor of nearly 400 publications, including books about Jewish summer camping and Birthright Israel, as well as journal articles, book chapters, and op-eds. He has been a Science Fellow for the United States Congress and was a Fulbright Professor at Haifa University, Israel. In 1989, he was awarded the American Psychological Association’s prize for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest, Early Career. In 2010, he received the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry’s Marshall Sklare award.
He teaches at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the College of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University.