Nathan Katz (professor) - Education and Career

Education and Career

Born in Philadelphia in 1948 and raised in Camden, New Jersey, Katz attended Temple University. After earning his B.A. in 1970, he worked for two years with the U. S. Information Agency in Afghanistan and spent a year in India studying classical languages before returning to Temple for graduate studies in Religion. He was a Fulbright dissertation fellow in Sri Lanka and India between 1976 and 1978, and was awarded his Ph.D. “with distinction” in 1979. He then joined the faculty in Buddhist Studies at Naropa University in Colorado, and after a year became Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College in Massachusetts. In 1984 he joined the faculty of the University of South Florida in Tampa, and a decade later was brought to FIU to start up a new Department of Religious Studies. He was also instrumental is starting up FIU’s programs in Jewish Studies and in Asian Studies.

He is best known for his work about Indo-Judaic Studies. He has written award-winning books on Indian Jewish communities, and in 2002 convened an international seminar on this topic at Oxford University, bringing together scholars from North America, India, Europe and Israel. The conference resulted in Indo-Judaic Studies in the 21st Century, a book that was the focus of an academic panel at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion.

Katz was selected as a delegate to the 1990 Tibetan-Jewish dialogue hosted by H. H. the Dalai Lama and reported in the best-selling The Jew in the Lotus. He reciprocated the hospitality in 1999 when the Dalai Lama first visited FIU for an honorary doctorate, as well as his 2004 and 2010 visits. Inspired by the Dalai Lama’s vision of educating both the “warm heart” and the “good brain,” Katz founded FIU’s innovative Program in the Study of Spirituality with foci on research, public programs and seminars, and the curriculum, including the world’s only undergraduate certificate program in the study of spirituality. In 2010 he was appointed Bhagwan Mahavir Professor of Jain Studies as well as Professor of Religious Studies. He assumed two additional appointments in 2012: Research Professor in FIU's School of International and Public Affairs; and Academic Director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU.

Katz also serves as an adjunct professor of Hinduism at Hindu University of America in Orlando, and as a consulting dean of Chaim Yakov Shlomo College of Jewish Studies, an Orthodox rabbinical school in Surfside.