Alumni Interview with Professor Jacob Daniels (Stanford History PhD, 2022)

Jacob Daniels (Stanford Ph.D. 2022, Brandeis B.A. 2007) is Assistant Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas- Austin. His research and teaching interests focus on nationalism, religion, identity, migration/displacement, and Sephardi Jews in the context of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Professor Daniels held the Eli Reinhard Postdoctoral Fellowship in Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies and taught as a graduate student and lecturer at Stanford. His first book, The Jews of Edirne : The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders, was published by Stanford University Press in 2025.

How did you become interested in Jewish History and the history of the Middle East?

First and foremost, I’ve always loved writing. By the time I graduated from college in 2007, I had my sights set on writing a book–any kind of book! The next step was coming to appreciate History as a discipline, which started happening in my late 20s, when I was working an office job in New York City. I think I was drawn to the fact that, arguably, History is one of the few humanities that still has a narrative element, in terms of how articles and books are written (postmodern trends notwithstanding). Meanwhile, I was taking Turkish classes after work and visiting Turkey several times a year to communicate with  my wife and her family in their native language. When I visited her in Istanbul, I became totally enthralled with the city and its Ottoman past, and I bought whatever books I could find on Ottoman History. My interest in Jewish History largely goes back to 1998, when I received  Eli Barnavi’s A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People as a Bar Mitzvah gift. I read that book religiously (pun intended). My reading knowledge of Spanish was the crucial link between my interests in Jewish and Ottoman History. Jews in the Ottoman Empire–or at least its heartland–mostly spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). Especially in the modern period, Ottoman Jews produced documents in Ladino that serve as rich sources for historians who can read Iberian Romance languages written in Hebrew letters. I realized that I could become such a historian.

Congratulations on your book, The Jews of Edirne : The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders (Stanford University Press, 2025). Tell us what it is about.

In writing this book, I wanted to move the historiography on Ottoman Jews away from the famous port cities and toward a very important inland city with a major Sephardi community that had received little attention from historians of the modern period. At the same time, current events in the United States gave me an intellectual obsession with the significance of borders in daily life: Why are borders so important to so many citizens of modern nation-states? How did borders as a relatively new institution come to occupy so much space in the political imagination?

Motivated by these broader questions,   I explore in the book an overlooked Sephardi-Jewish community, the origin and development of one particular border in Thrace, and the interplay of those two stories. Of course, there’s no way to tell these stories without also looking at the experiences of local Christians and Muslims. Focusing on the period from the 1908 Young Turk Revolution to the  1934 anti-Jewish attacks, I follow the Jews of Edirne as they zigzagged between empire and nation-states (plural); as their city became a border town; and as their region lost its ethno-religious diversity. 

Tell us about your archival sources. Is there a particular archival moment that you can share with us?

Serious research for the book probably began when I acquired a PDF containing all extant issues of La Boz de la Verdad–Edirne’s only Ladino newspaper for the period 1910-1925. I also spent a lot of time in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, where the Edirne Chief Rabbinate’s records are kept. Online and in Paris, I extensively used the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle–an international Jewish organization that once ran a network of Jewish schools stretching from Morocco to Iran. In fact, the cover of my book features a photograph from their digital library. From other sources, I knew the names of the two Jewish women who appear in the center of the photo. But I did not know which name went with which woman. That was a shame. When I asked the archive director for a high-resolution file that we could use for the book cover, he asked, “Which version do you want? With or without the captions?” I immediately wrote back: “There’s a version with captions??” Indeed, there was a version of that 1912 photograph with everyone’s names written at the bottom, in Ottoman Turkish. Now I know that the woman on our right is Rosa Mitrani, and the woman on our left is Angele Gueron. I was able to add that to the Introduction at the eleventh hour.

The book builds upon your 2022 Stanford dissertation. In one word, how would you describe your experience in turning your dissertation into a book manuscript?

Clarify. I like the metaphor of making clarified butter. The butter you start with is heated until water evaporates and milk solids float to the surface, from where they are skimmed off. Turning my dissertation into a book often involved applying intellectual heat to the document until I could figure out what, exactly, I was trying to say in a given paragraph, section, or chapter. Fat was skimmed. Water evaporated. Of course, clear arguments and narratives are easier to critique than muddled ones. But that’s what good books do–they make bold points that generate constructive criticism. That’s how scholarly conversation works.

As an undergraduate, you studied Politics, Philosophy, & Economics (PP&E) and European Cultural Studies, and then proceeded to work in city government, financial and literary journalism, and healthcare administration. How did these experiences inform your choice and pursuit of a graduate degree in History?

In terms of finding a calling, my twenties can be characterized as a process of elimination. Financial journalism taught me the art of concision, but I didn’t want to write about mutual funds for the rest of my life. Working for the city of Newark, NJ was an eye-opening experience. But I came to the conclusion that there were two kinds of jobs: action jobs and truth jobs. I had the former, but I wanted the latter. After taking some time off to write an unpublished novella (!), I worked as administrative manager of a mental health clinic, because I thought I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in Psychology. In hindsight, I think I struggled to permit myself to indulge in something that seemed purely intellectual: I still couldn’t let myself pursue a Ph.D. that lacked a “practical” or “action” component. Luckily, I got over that hang-up. And now that I’m teaching, giving book talks, and leading an academic center at the  University of Texas-Austin, I realize that the truth-action dichotomy has its limits.It’s also worth mentioning that I read voraciously when I was in my twenties–more than I read now! I think I needed to establish an intellectual foundation on which all subsequent thinking would stand. That was crucial. 

How would you advise Stanford undergraduates who are still debating a degree in History? 

Choosing a major is an important decision, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. If you are drawn to History but have reservations about its usefulness, you should think about what kind of person you want to be. Are you the kind of person who does what they love regardless of the financial consequences? Or, are you the kind of person who compartmentalizes their desires and prioritizes stability? Of course, there’s a huge middle ground, and I’m oversimplifying to make a point. But that point is: with every choice you make, you are getting in the habit of being a certain kind of person. Choosing a major is important, first and foremost, as a matter of character. I think the question isn’t, “What do I want to do with my life?” but rather, “What kind of person do I want to be?” I would add that it’s hard to imagine an economy in which there is absolutely no need for the skills you build doing a History major–interrogating sources, writing an evidence-based argument, empathizing with people in foreign milieus, etc.

Your current position combines academic programming with research and teaching. How did your Stanford education prepare you for such a complex role? 

I have a teaching-focused, non-tenure-track position called Assistant Professor of Instruction for Jewish Studies. Additionally, I am Assistant Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, which basically entails being the face of the Center for UT undergrads. The subject-matter and historiographical training I received at Stanford prepared me greatly for this combination. I came to appreciate this while writing the lesson plans for my first classes at UT. Feeling like I had my classes under control freed me up to dedicate the necessary time and energy to administrative responsibilities. I’m also lucky that my Ph.D. advisor Professor Aron Rodrigue always combined his scholarly guidance with pragmatic advice.

How would you advise current graduate students training in History or the Humanities?

There’s a tendency to think of success in black-and-white terms: Will I succeed, or will I fail? Will I make it, or not? Graduate students in the humanities right now might want to prepare for the possibility of something in the middle. Look at me, for example. On the one hand, I have a book out with a prestigious university press, and I have a faculty position at one of the best state schools in the country. On the other hand, I’m on a non-tenure track at a moment of great uncertainty for academics in Texas, the United States, and beyond. Have I “succeeded”? Have I “made it”? I don’t think the answer is “yes” or “no.” If my case is representative, people might want to relax their notions of success and failure, and instead prepare for ambiguities, uncertainties, and vagaries.

What texts inspired you the most in your career?

I still think a lot about Frederich Nietzsche’s On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, which I read as an undergrad at Brandeis. The title says it all. When I was considering grad school back in 2014, I quickly decided that I wanted to study with Aron Rodrigue, because his short articles were–and still are–my model of clear and concise academic writing. One memorable text from my directed reading with Professor Joel Beinin was James Clifford’s “On Orientalism” from his book, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. My notes from that time contain the following: “Joel and Basma [Fahoum, my classmate] note that while it’s dangerous to ‘other’ a group of people, there obviously are real cultural differences between different groups of people. How should we understand these differences? It’s important to treat every culture as something dynamic and alive, not something fixed on an essence.” I reread this note at least once a year!

What are some key things you remember from your time at Stanford?

Taking Professor JP Daughton’s Approaches to History course with my amazing Ph.D. cohort; learning Ladino from Olga Borovaya at a picnic table by Meyer Green; the moody lighting in Professor Steven Zipperstein’s office at dusk; eating candy in Burçak’s office; walking by a puppy-themed children’s birthday party in EV with my new puppy, who then played with all the kids; the History-Art History grad mixer that my friend Amber and I hosted on the deck of the Bowes Art & Architecture Library overlooking the Rodin Sculpture Garden (thank you Art Palmon!); Professor Ali Yaycıoğlu prankishly suggesting that I had failed my oral exams; drinking a 16-ounce can of beer after completing the first chapter of my dissertation; Anna Toledano letting me play a record on her KZSU radio show; the list goes on…