Jacob Morrow-Spitzer is a scholar of modern Jewish history and U.S. political history. His research sits at the intersection of American Jewish life, citizenship formation, state power, transnational migration, racism and antisemitism. He has also written extensively about the Jewish experience in the American South. In May 2026, he received his Ph.D. in History, with distinction, from Yale University. His dissertation, titled “Worthy Citizens: Jewish Citizenship Politics in the Age of American State Transformation, 1850-1933,” was awarded the Edwin W. Small Prize for outstanding scholarship in the field of American history.

Starting in September 2026, Jacob will be the Postdoctoral Associate at the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University. At BU, he will begin work on his first book manuscript, which seeks to understand how Jews politically mobilized to sustain equal citizenship from the founding of the United States to the rise of the modern liberal state. He is also at work on articles about the development of Zionism and Jewish entanglements with American policing and prisons.

Jacob is passionate about teaching Jewish Studies and American history. He has taught courses at Yale and lectured widely on topics of modern Jewish politics and emancipation, antisemitism, American empire, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the history of the U.S. South. He has also held several prestigious fellowships, including a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Association for Jewish Studies (2025-2026), and the Sid and Ruth Lapidus Graduate Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Research at the Center for Jewish History in New York (2024-2025).

Outside of academia, Jacob is an avid distance runner. He has completed several major marathons, including the Boston Marathon (2022, 2023, 2026), the New York City Marathon (2024, 2025), the Chicago Marathon (2023) and soon the Berlin Marathon (September 2026!). In the winter months he also downhill skis, figure skates, and waits impatiently for the baseball season to return. He is also a passionate yet unskilled cook.

Jacob originally hails from Portland, Maine. He currently lives in Boston with his partner Lily and their cat Louise.

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