Brooks Lecture 2001: Moshe Gershovich Biography

THE RABBI SIDNEY H. BROOKS LECTURE

Guest Speaker: Moshe Gershovich

Moshe Gershovich is a native of Israel (1959). He received his formative education there and in 1982 earned a BA from Tel Aviv University, with a dual major in Middle Eastern and Jewish History. He studied towards his

MA at the Arrane School of History at TAU and worked as a junior researcher at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, also at TAU.

In 1985 he came to the USA to study for his Ph.D. at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His chosen topic concerned French military colonialism in Morocco. He submitted his dissertation and received his Ph.D. in June 1995. His first book, based on his graduate research, was published in 2000 by Cass. It is entitled French Military Rule over Morocco: Colonialism and its Consequences. In addition he has published numerous scholarly articles related to that topic.

Between 1995-1998 Dr. Gershovich served as visiting lecturer at the History Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1998 he was awarded a senior scholar Fulbright grant for Morocco. He spent the next two and a half years (1998-2000) in that country as a faculty member of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane. During that period he conducted field research concerning the collective biography of Moroccan veterans of the French Army. He is currently writing a book manuscript on that subject, entitled “Serving the Tricolor: Moroccan Soldiers in French Uniforms.”

In 2000 Dr. Gershovich accepted an offer to teach Modern European History at UNO. He relocated to Omaha with his family in December 2000 and has been teaching here since Spring 2001. Other than teaching sections of the World Civilization II survey, his course offerings include courses on Modern France, Modern International History, the Modern Middle East, Contemporary North Africa, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. In Fall 2001 he is scheduled to teach an upper-division undergraduate and graduate class on the Holocaust.