Emmaia Gelman is the author of The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State, a critical history of the Anti-Defamation League as a Cold War neoconservative institution (UC Press, 2026) and co-editor of The Anti-Defamation League: A Critical Reader (Pluto Press, 2026). She co-hosts the podcast Unpacking Zionism. Emmaia is co-chair of the American Studies Association Caucus on Academic and Community Activism, and a longtime activist in New York City.

Emmaia is the founding director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which examines the political and ideological work of Zionist institutions in Palestine and transnational contexts. She researches the history of ideas about race, queerness, safety, and rights, and their production as levers in surveillance, “anti-terror”, and war. Her teaching spans academic and community spaces.

She writes for academic and general audiences, with work in Boston Review, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Jadaliyya, Journal for the Critical Study of Zionism, Jewish Currents, Truthout, Mondoweiss, and others.