Myers joined the faculty of the UCLA History Department in 1991 as a lecturer and 1992 as an assistant professor. He published his first book, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History, in 1995. Myers served for ten years as the director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies and, from 2010–15, as the Robert N. Burr Department Chair of the UCLA History Department. He also has served since 2003 as the co-editor, along with Elliott Horowitz and Natalie Dohrmann, of the Jewish Quarterly Review. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He received the inaugural Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA in 2015. Recently, he completed a book on the Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, New York.
Center For Jewish History
In 2017, Myers was appointed CEO of Center for Jewish History. Following Myers' appointment, some in the Jewish community objected to his activism in organizations supportive of Israeli-Palestinian peace and co-existence, while simultaneously hundreds of Jewish historians responded by expressing their support for Myers. Those who demanded his resignation included Israeli Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich, as well as the Zionist Organization of America and others. The right-wing Middle East Forum opined "Myers may present a moderate façade, but his academic & political affiliations expose his radical core." According to the Forward, "the campaign against Myers appears to have shaken the CJH," though Myers has stated that the protests were only a nuisance early in his tenure and were not the reason for his decision to leave the Center. “After the first two unpleasant months, I had a great time here,” Myers said. Despite the attacks by groups associated with the Israeli right, Jewish studies scholars in the United States largely rallied behind Myers. In an op-ed defending Myers, Brandeis professors Jonathan Sarna and Rabbi David Ellenson wrote, "The writings of David Myers indisputably fall well within the scholarly mainstream of Jewish life and they are unquestionably supportive of Israel’s basic right to exist." Stepped down from this position in August 2018, returning to UCLA full time. “This is the result of months of deliberation spent on planes going back and forth and really asking myself, Where do I want to be in life?” he said.
New Israel Fund
He became President of the New Israel Fund in October 2018 after serving as a board member. He also has served as an instructor for the Wexner Heritage Foundation, and writes frequently on matters of contemporary Jewish concern.
Published books
Authored
Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995
Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003
Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2008
The Stakes of History: On the Use and Abuse of Jewish History for Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.
Edited
David N. Myers and William V. Rowe, eds. From Ghetto to Emancipation: Historical and Contemporary Reconsiderations of the Jewish Community, introduction by D. N. Myers. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1997
David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman, eds. The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, introduction by D. N. Myers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998
Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers, eds. Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998
Richard Hovannisian and David N. Myers, eds. Enlightenment and Diaspora: The Armenian and Jewish Cases. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999
Michael Brenner and David N. Myers, eds. Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung heute: Themen, Positionen, Kontroversen. Munich: Beck Verlag, 2002
David N. Myers et al. eds. Acculturation and its Discontents: The Italian Jewish Experience between Integration and Exclusion. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008
David N. Myers and Alexander Kaye, eds. The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2013
Michael A. Meyer and David N. Myers, eds. Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Essays in Honor of David Ellenson. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014
David N. Myers, eds. The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act. Oakland, CA, 2018. https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/10.1525/luminos.50/read/#epubcfi(/6/2!/4/1:
