Barry Trachtenberg is a historian of modern European and American Jewry, and as an Associate Professor at Wake Forest University he teaches classes about the Nazi Holocaust, Zionism, and American Jewry. Trachtenberg is also a member of the Academic Advisory Board of Jewish Voice for Peace. Trachtenberg recently authored the Mondoweiss article “The New Kherem, or ‘Barry Trachtenberg Does Not Represent Us!’: On speaking for and against Jewish self-interests” in which he describes how a new form of kherem (Yiddish and Hebrew for “excommunication”) is being used against Jewish critics of Israel and Zionism.