Prof. Schejter’s Journey Through US Campuses and Communities
Prof. Schejter’s Journey Through US Campuses and Communities
April 4, 2025
Israel Studies, Culture & Jewish Thought, Social Sciences & Humanities
After spending a year and a half researching, writing, and lecturing across the United States, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s (BGU) Prof. Amit Schejter returned home to Israel in January 2025 with a wide array of experiences and mementos.
He now has 21 magnets on his refrigerator — one for each U.S. state he visited during that time, with the westernmost point in Hawaii and the easternmost in New York.
Yet on a deeper level, Schejter came away with a greater appreciation for Jewish identity and Jewish life outside of Israel.
“I learned during that year and a half that if you really want to feel Jewish, you shouldn’t be in Israel,” Schejter says. “And while at first I thought that the only place in the U.S. where you could be Jewish is in New York, after crossing America, I really felt part of a community and part of a larger identity. When you’re in Israel, you take it for granted. But when you’re outside of Israel and actually go and meet the communities, you learn that you really belong to something that is very diverse and special and interesting and has a lot of meaning in it. In Israel we really overlook that because Judaism is transparent for us.”
One moment that was particularly moving for Schejter came when he recited Kadish (the Jewish mourner’s prayer) for his late mother at a synagogue in Berkeley, Calif., and felt more “at home” than he expected in that experience.
At BGU, Schejter is a full professor in the Department of Communication Studies. He has headed the department and has served as dean of the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. His research focuses on the relationship between media and justice, as he analyzes the relationship between the introduction of new information and communication technologies and the silencing of the public’s voice, in particular that of members of marginalized communities. For 15 years, he has also been a visiting professor at Penn State University and co-director of the Institute for Information Policy at the university’s Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.
During his sabbatical in the U.S., Schejter spent the first year as guest of Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information and Columbia University’s Institute for Tele-Information, and the final six months at University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law within the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. He spent a significant amount of time working on his forthcoming book about a new approach to freedom of expression, while also giving presentations at universities around the country on the topic of his most recent previous book, Digital Capabilities: ICT Adoption in Marginalized Communities in Israel and the West Bank. Co-authored with eight of his graduate students, the book explores ways to expand access to information and communication technologies among underserved populations.
Simultaneously, with his sabbatical beginning in August 2023 and the October 7th attacks occurring shortly thereafter, Schejter says he needed “to adjust my talks to current issues.” Despite the surge of antisemitism on college campuses throughout the U.S. during the ongoing war following the October 7th massacre, Schejter reports that he was fortunate enough to not personally experience animosity in connection with his public lectures and presentations.
In regard to Penn State, Schejter’s longtime visiting professorship continues, although he rarely gets to visit the campus in-person. He had served for 10 years as a full-time faculty member there, and when BGU recruited him, “Penn State really couldn’t say goodbye to me and I couldn’t say goodbye to them.” Accordingly, Schejter and the school agreed on a permanent visiting position. Through Penn State’s Institute for Information Policy, he founded the Journal of Information Policy, which has now published 15 volumes.
As a scholar who returned to Israel after holding a faculty position abroad, Schejter sees the merits of Israeli researchers working both domestically and internationally.
“As long as a balance is maintained, I think the flow of people across the world is beneficial,” he says. “You get to meet different people, you get to be exposed to different cultures. It teaches you to be more tolerant and accepting. I think the exchange of people and movement is a good thing.”
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