From Left Wing Activist to Breitbart Editor

From Left Wing Activist to Breitbart Editor

Thursday, 12:00 PM PDT

Joel Pollak is senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News, the popular conservative news site that, in busy political times, has more traffic than ESPN. In conversation with AJU President, Jeffrey Herbst, he will discuss his journey from liberal activist to prominent conservative, and from his native South Africa to the United States. Pollak, author of the recent ebook The Zionist Conspiracy (and How to Join It), will also discuss the lessons of Israel's success.

Joel Pollak is the author of Red November and Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel at Breitbart News. He also hosts Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot 125, Sunday evenings from 7 to 10 Eastern. He was born in South Africa and raised in the Chicago suburbs. After graduating from Harvard College with high honors in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy, he was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar in South Africa. He later served as speechwriter for the Leader of the Opposition in the South African Parliament and completed a Master of Arts degree in Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. Back home in the United States, he graduated from Harvard Law School and went on to work as a Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He ran, unsuccessfully, for U.S. Congress in 2010, but befriended conservative media pioneer Andrew Breitbart along the way, later joining him in Los Angeles, where they worked side-by-side transforming a blog into a 24-hour news website that would go on to change American politics and is one of the top news sites in the U.S. He is the author of several books, including How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution. He is also a winner of the Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship and lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with his wife Julia and family.

Dr. Jeffrey Herbst is the fourth president of American Jewish University.  At AJU, he has focused on promoting innovation in the university’s academic programs.  He has also supported the growth of the Maas Center for Jewish Journeys, expansion of the B’Yachad/Together digital platform, and capital improvements on the Brandeis-Bardin Campus. Prior to joining AJU, Dr. Herbst was president and CEO of the Newseum and the Newseum Institute in Washington, DC. From 2010 to 2015, he was president of Colgate University, where among other accomplishments he is credited with helping the university complete its nearly half billion-dollar fundraising campaign, leading the development and initial implementation of a university-wide strategic plan, and increasing the diversity and academic caliber of its educational programming. Dr. Herbst earned his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Princeton University, and a master’s degree and doctorate in political science from Yale University. He is the author of the award-winning “States and Power in Africa” and, with several co-authors, the just-published “Making Africa Work.”