Gregg Drinkwater

Hired in January 2023, Dr. Gregg Drinkwater is the inaugural Program Director for the UC Berkeley Antisemitism Education Initiative (AEI), a project of the Center for Jewish Studies. An award-winning writer, educator, trainer, researcher, and organizational leader, Drinkwater’s work is rooted in fostering inclusive communities. He has been involved for decades with Jewish, LGBTQ, and social justice organizations throughout the United States and the world. He earned a PhD in U.S. History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with a specialization in Jewish history and LGBTQ history. As a visiting professor at Boulder and at Rutgers University, Drinkwater has taught courses on American Jewish history; genocide and the Holocaust; queer U.S. history; gender and sexuality in Judaism; and global Jewish history from the ancient world to the present. Starting in 2003, Drinkwater served as the founding executive director of Jewish Mosaic, a national Jewish LGBTQ organization, where he built and managed a team across multiple cities, designed and oversaw the creation of a library of Jewish community resources, and conducted research, trainings, and conferences on issues of inclusion. After Jewish Mosaic merged with Keshet in 2010, he continued his work championing diversity and inclusion before his shift to the University of Colorado in 2013.  His research has appeared in the journals Jewish Social Studies and American Jewish History (which awarded him the Wasserman Prize for the best article in that journal for 2020), as well as the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. He is the co-editor of the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (NYU Press, 2009).