Ellen Eisenberg

Ellen Eisenberg taught in the history department at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon from 1990 to 2026. From 2003 until her retirement in 2026, she held the Dwight and Margaret Lear chair in American History. She earned her BA from Carleton College and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her scholarship centers on Jews in the West, and she is particularly interested in relationships between western Jews and other minority ethnic groups. Her published work includes five monographs, one edited anthology and a number of journal articles and book chapters. The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII was a 2008 National Jewish Book Award finalist. More recent works include two monographs on the history of Jews in Oregon, titled Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849-1950 and The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2015, and the edited anthology, Jewish Identities in the American West: Relational Perspectives, which was published in 2022 as part of Brandeis University Press’s series on American Jewish History, Culture and Life.