YISHAI BARTH is many things; an author, an orator, a lover of literature and opera, an activist and member of the disability community, and a serious geek. Above all, he is an ideas man. Drawn to academia from a young age, his work takes inspiration from and issue with ideas of capacity, ability, and humanity from across the social sciences.

Yishai is a rare bloom, the product of cross pollination between a socialist rabbi father and a Harvard MBA mother. He credits their influence as the foundation of the swirling heterodoxy of his work.

Religion plays an important role in Yishai’s life. He is a culturally and spiritually engaged Jew. He is a proud graduate and lifetime member of the אצא (AZA) fraternity and international order within BBYO where he participated in numerous leadership training programs and acted in numerous leadership capacities. He has also had a lifelong interest in ecumen and interfaith spirituality.

Though he was raised in the United States, Yishai feels most at home at Cambridge University, where he is currently pursuing a PhD in sociology and writing a book, Theory of Everyone, with a wink to his personal hero and fellow Cambridge alumnus, Stephen Hawking.