Andrew Rehfeld

Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D., is the 10th President of Hebrew Union College. Appointed in April of 2019, Rehfeld has bridged the academic and Jewish professional worlds as a tenured faculty member in Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis (2001-2019) and as President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis (2012-2019).

Rehfeld received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and an MPP from Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies. Among the most cited theorists of political representation today, his academic research focuses on the intersection of democracy, human rights, justice, and institutional design. Other areas of published research include the history of political thought, the philosophy of the social sciences, and the political uses of the Hebrew Bible.

The author of The Concept of Constituency (Cambridge University Press, 2005), a work of applied democratic theory, and a contributor to the Cambridge Companion to the United States Constitution (2018), his work has appeared in the most important journals of his field, including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and the Journal of Political Philosophy.

Rehfeld held the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in the Study and Practice of Federalism, McGill University, and has held visiting faculty appointments at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, and Libera Universita Internazionale Degli Studi Sociali (LUISS Guido Carli), Rome.

Rehfeld has served on the boards of KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park in Hyde Park, Chicago, and the board of Hillel at Washington University in St. Louis, along with many other communal boards in Chicago and St. Louis. He is currently a member of the board of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and on the national board of directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).