Joshua Rubenstein, BA
Northeast Regional Director
Amnesty International USA
Biography
Joshua Rubenstein has been professionally involved with human rights and international affairs for more than 35 years as an activist, scholar and journalist with particular expertise in Soviet affairs.
A long-time Fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, he has made many research trips to Moscow and other Russian cities. He has lectured and written widely on the Soviet human rights movement, including a series of lectures in Russian at the Mendeleev Institute in Moscow in the fall of 1990 and in the spring of 1991.
His first book, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights (Beacon Press, 1980; 1985), was based on research and interviews in Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Israel, and the United States. In a review in The New York Review of Books, it was praised as "sympathetic, scholarly, and comprehensive," and "recommended to all who want to get a fair picture of the development and tribulations of the movement, and of the experiences of some of its most prominent protagonists."
Mr. Rubenstein's book, Tangled Loyalties, The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, a biography of the controversial Soviet writer and journalist, was published after thirteen years of research and writing, including two months examining newly available material in Russian archives and libraries. He also conducted personal interviews with more than one hundred people who knew Ehrenburg, locating them in Russia, England, France, Spain, Israel, and the United States.
His latest book is Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary's Life, part of the "Jewish Lives" Series at Yale University Press.
Mr. Rubenstein has also contributed articles and reviews on Russian and international affairs to many publications including Commentary, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
Since 1975, Mr. Rubenstein has been the Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA, overseeing Amnesty's work in New England, New York and New Jersey. His responsibilities have been wide-ranging. They include acting as an official Amnesty spokesman on radio, television and in the print media; maintaining extensive press contacts and initiating editorial board meetings on breaking human rights stories; organizing public forums and benefits; establishing Amnesty chapters in high schools, colleges and the community; directing a staff of five people and many volunteers in the Northeast Regional Office located in Boston; and participating in numerous human rights activities at the national and international level.