Graduation & Ordination
Speakers and Honorees

Honorees

Roger E. Joseph Prize Recipient

• Stacy Burdett, Public Policy Strategist and Advocate Countering Antisemitism

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters

• Jennifer Kaufman, Immediate Past Chair, URJ (View Bio)
• Linda G. Mills, Ph.D., NYU President; Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law; and Founder, Center on Violence and Recovery (CVR) (View Bio)
• David N. Myers, Ph.D., Distinguished Prof. and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History; Director, UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy; Director, UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) (View Bio)

Stay tuned for more announcements about this season’s graduation and ordination speakers.

Meet the Speakers & Honorees

Linda G. Mills, Ph.D., 

NYU President; Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law; and Founder, Center on Violence and Recovery (CVR)

Linda G. Mills is the 17th president of New York University and the Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law. Mills is also founder of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery and a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. Mills’ scholarship is influenced by her family’s experience during the Holocaust, including her Jewish mother’s escape from Vienna in 1939 and her great-grandmother’s murder by the Nazis in Riga. This history has driven her to explore questions related to justice, resiliency, and recovery.

Mills’ groundbreaking research funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice has reshaped the field of treatment in domestic violence and her restorative justice-based programs are currently being adopted in several jurisdictions across the U.S. She is a widely published author of articles appearing in Harvard Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Journal of Experimental Criminology, and Nature: Human Behavior, among others. Her books have been published by Princeton University Press, University of Michigan Press, Springer, and Basic Books. As a filmmaker, she has produced award-winning documentaries that have debuted at Tribeca Film Festival and the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival and have been shown in Abu Dhabi, Austria, and Tunisia, among other countries. Of Many: Then and Now appeared on ABC to 8.1 million viewers.

Mills first came to NYU as an Associate Professor of Social Work in 1999 and in 2001 was promoted to full Professor. In 2002, she was named Vice Provost (and in 2006 Senior Vice Provost) for Undergraduate Education and University Life. She served as NYU’s Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice Provost for Global Programs and University Life from 2012 to 2023.

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Rabbi Lisa D. Grant ’17, Ph.D.

Eleanor Sinsheimer Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College

Rabbi Lisa D. Grant, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR/New York. Her research and teaching interests focus on adult Jewish learning, the professional development of Jewish leaders and the place of Israel in American Jewish life. She has published widely on these topics in a range of academic journals, books, and teaching guides.

Rabbi Grant has served on the faculty of HUC-JIR since 2000. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, her Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her Ph.D. from The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York; and her rabbinical ordination from HUC-JIR.

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Rabbi Dvora Weisberg ’11, Ph.D.

National Director, Rabbinical School

Rabbi Dvora Weisberg is the Rabbi Aaron Panken Professor of Rabbinics and the Director of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Rabbi Weisberg was raised in San Francisco. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Her undergraduate thesis, for which she was awarded highest honors in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, was entitled “Can the Demands of Jewish Feminists Be Met Within the Halakhic System?” She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Talmud and Rabbinic Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and was ordained at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. Before coming to HUC-JIR, Rabbi Weisberg taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Rabbi Weisberg is the author of Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism (2008), a study of the ancient rabbis’ vision of the family and its members, and Tractate Menahot: A Feminist Commentary (2020). Her book on levirate marriage and the family was a finalist for the 2009 National Jewish Book Awards in the category of Women’s Studies.

Rabbi Weisberg is married to Rabbi Neal Scheindlin and is the mother of Micah (& Elana) and Noah Scheindlin, and the savta of Orli Maya Scheindlin and Eitan Yonah Scheindlin.

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David N. Myers, Ph.D.

Distinguished Prof. and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History; Director, UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy; Director, UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) who also will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa

David N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA, where he serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He also directs the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, and the UCLA Dialogue across Difference Initiative. He is the author or editor of many books in the field of Jewish history, including, with Nomi Stolzenberg, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (Princeton, 2022), which was awarded the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish studies. Most recently, he is the co-editor with Nechumi Malovicki-Yaffe of the volume New Trends in the Study of Haredi Culture and Society (forthcoming from Purdue University Press, 2024). From 2018-2023, he served as president of the New Israel Fund.

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Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch

Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), CEO

Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch (she/her) serves as the CEO of Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), a position she has held since 2023. Prior to leading the WRJ, she served as the rabbi of Temple Anshe Amunim in Pittsfield, MA. Rabbi Hirsch was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, where she earned recognition for her academic and leadership achievements as a Wexner Graduate Fellow, Tisch Fellow, and WRJ Scholar. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Brown University. A passionate advocate for justice, Rabbi Hirsch founded and co-chaired RAC Massachusetts, a statewide synagogue-based community organizing initiative of Reform Judaism. She played a pivotal role as a key faith leader in the successful 2020 campaign to pass the ROE Act, safeguarding reproductive rights and abortion access in Massachusetts. She began her career as a Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center, where she focused on issues related to Israel and antisemitism.

Rabbi Hirsch is a frequent writer and speaker on topics including social justice, spiritual practice, and the evolving landscape of Jewish life. Her thought leadership has been featured in The Social Justice Torah Commentary (CCAR Press, 2021) and Prophetic Voices: Renewing and Reimagining Haftarah (CCAR Press, 2023). She also hosts Just For This, a weekly podcast that empowers women in leadership to explore themes of gender and leadership.

Rabbi Hirsch lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband, Rabbi Neil P.G. Hirsch, and their two children.

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Stacy Burdett

Joseph Prize Recipient

Stacy Burdett works with policymakers, philanthropies, Universities and other nonprofits on strategies to prevent and respond to antisemitism and to ensure a welcoming culture for Jews and all communities. She has testified in Congress about antisemitism at the invitation of both parties, including in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks.

She served as Vice President for Government Relations, Advocacy and Community Engagement at the Anti-Defamation League, where she worked for 24 years, directing national issue campaigns and coalition advocacy and lobbied in Washington on Jewish as well as civil and human rights issues. In 2017, she joined the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as its first Director of Government and External Relations to support the rollout of a new exhibit on America’s response to the rise of Nazism.  Against the backdrop of day to day debates on immigration policy, the use of terms like “America First,” she worked with Congressional and administration leaders to explore Holocaust history and its relevance to their decision making.

Stacy got her start in professional advocacy in the Soviet Jewry movement as a public affairs officer at the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. She holds a B.A. in Middle East Studies from Barnard College, has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and has lived and worked in Israel. Stacy has served on advisory boards for the William S. Cohen Institute for Leadership & Public Service at the University of Maine and the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project. She is on the board of directors of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), the Lillian & Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, and Tivnu: Building Justice, the nation’s only Jewish gap year program.

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Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman

Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman served as the chair of the URJ North American Board (NAB) from December 2019 to April 2024 and continues her service to the Reform Movement in her role as past chair.  Her participation in the NAB began in 2003 and included a variety of roles across all of the organization’s efforts, including as chair of the Commission on Social Action.  Jennifer helped develop the URJ Ethics Code and was a member of the CCAR’s Task Force on the Experience of Women in the Rabbinate. Jennifer held leadership roles in a number of youth-related URJ activities and served many years on the Camp Newman Committee. She chaired the URJ’s internal task force to begin the visioning for Northern California camping in the aftermath of the Santa Rosa fires.  She served on the Rabbinic Placement Commission and the Joint Cantorial Placement Commission.  As Immediate Past Chair, Jennifer continues to serve as a member of the HUC Board of Governors.  She remains involved in Israel-related activities, coordinating efforts of California congregations in the 2025 World Zionist Congress elections, serving on the Arzeinu Board, and chairing the international legal society to support the Israel Religious Action Center.  She is also serving on the Leadership Advisory Board for CCAR’s new torah commentary.   Jennifer is a past president of Congregation B’nai Israel in Sacramento. She worked as an attorney for nearly 30 years at the California Third District Court of Appeal and was president of Women Lawyers of Sacramento. She is now enjoying retirement with her husband, Todd. Their two adult sons and their families have also made Sacramento home.

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