The Next Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School

Laurie Zoloth, an expert in bioethics and Jewish studies has been named the next dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School. Dr. Zoloth currently serves as the Charles McCormick Deering Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University. She holds joint appointments in the department of religious studies and in the Feinberg School of Medicine.

Professor Zoloth is a founding board member of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning and past president of the American Academy of Religion and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. She is the author of Health Care and the Ethics of Encounter: A Jewish Discussion of Social Justice (University of North Carolina Press, 1999). She is also the editor of five additional books.

In accepting the appointment, Dr. Zoloth said, “the Divinity School is the nation’s leading institution for theological research and education, home to creative, honest, and serious scholarship. I look forward to listening, thinking carefully and learning thoughtfully to help shape the future of the Divinity School, furthering it as a site of intellectual leadership in Chicago and around the world.”

Professor Zoloth holds a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the State University of New York. She holds a master’s degree from San Francisco State University and a second master’s degree in Jewish studies and a doctorate from the Graduate Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California.