Paul Scham is a Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Maryland and a former Director of its Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies. He has worked on issues involving Israel and Palestine for almost 30 years, in universities, policy institutes, and advocacy NGOs in both Washington and in the Middle East, living in Jerusalem and Amman. He has written numerous scholarly articles, policy analyses, and op-eds and co-edited Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue (2005) and Shared Narratives (2011), as well as a forthcoming book on Polarization and Consensus Building: The Center Cannot Hold (Routledge 2022). For 10 years he also edited the Israel Studies Review, the academic journal of the Association for Israel Studies.
From 1996-2002, he coordinated joint Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Jordanian research projects at the Truman Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is President of Partners for Progressive Israel, an American NGO and writes a regular column for its e-journal, Israel Horizons.
Education:
B.A. at Columbia University; J.D. at University of California at Berkeley
Countries of Expertise:
Israel, Palestine, Jordan
Issues of Expertise:
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and its History, Israel's Current Politics and History, Hamas, Israel's Regional Relations
