Ephraim Isaac, BD (Harvard Divinity School ’63), Ph.D. (Harvard University ’69), D.H.L. (CUNY) D.Litt. (AAU), a founder and the first professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University when the Department was created in 1969, is author of numerous scholarly works about the Late Second Temple period and Classical Yemenite Jewish and Ethiopic religious literature. He is currently Director of the Institute of Semitic Studies, Princeton, NJ, Chair of the Board of the Horn of Africa Peace & Development Committee, and President of the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America. He has taught at Princeton University, Hebrew University, University of Pennsylvania, Bard College, and other institutions of higher learning. He has received many honors including the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding’s 2002 Peacemaker in Action Award, honorary degrees from John J. College of CUNY, Addis Ababa University of Ethiopia, NEH Fellowship, among others. He knows seventeen languages, and lectures widely on the subject of “Religion & Warfare”, “Religion and Hate”, etc. and sits on Boards of some twenty-five international religious, educational, and cultural organizations.

The Largest Group of Living Semitic Languages are in Ethiopia

Currently, Professor Ephraim Isaac is the Director of the Institute of Semitic Studies in Princeton, NJ and Fellow of The Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. Born in Ethiopia where he got his early education, Dr. Isaac holds a B. A. degree in Philosophy, Chemistry, & Music (Concordia College); a Master degree in Divinity (Harvard Divinity School); a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages (Harvard University). He was Professor at Harvard University between 1968 and 1977, the first professor hired in Afro-American Studies at Harvard, and one of its founders, he was voted the best teacher each year by the students and the Department.