Lawrence Baron

Laurie Baron

Lawrence (Laurie) Baron, now retired, served as the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. He served from 1988 to 2006 as director of SDSU’s Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies. He was the founder in 1995 of the Western Jewish Studies Association.

He writes two satire columns for San Diego Jewish World: “Humoring the Headlines” under his byline, and “Hounding the Headlines,” under the byline of his dog Elona.

Books to his credit, available on Amazon, include:

Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema

The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema

The eclectic anarchism of Erich Muhsam (Men & movements in the history & philosophy of anarchism)

His most recent articles are:

“Making Room for the Jews: The House I Live In (1945),” AJS Perspectives, Summer 2023, 86-88.  

The Revolt of Job: Salvaging the Lost World of Rural Hungarian Hasidim,” Journal of Jewish Identities, 16:1-2 (January/July 2023), 181-198.

“Persistent Parallels, Resistant Particularities: Holocaust Analogies and Avoidance in Armenian Genocide Centennial Cinema, in Armenian and Jewish Experience between Expulsion and Destruction, ed. Sarah M. Ross and Regina Randhofer (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), 267-296.

“The Pioneering American Jewish Women Directors from Elaine May to Claudia Weill,” Jews and Gender (Studies in Jewish Civilization), ed. Leonard Greenspoon (W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2021), 217-243.

Humoring the headlines: August 29, 2014

Editor’s Note:  This is the 100th “Humoring the Headlines” column to appear on San Diego Jewish World.   To Professor Baron goes a hearty Mazal Tov! By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ The National Football League announced that it will impose six-game suspensions on any player found guilty of domestic violence. The battered spouses of the players […]

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Humoring the headlines: August 15, 2014

  By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ Forty-six years ago in August 1968, the Chicago Police Department used excessive force to suppress demonstrators at the Democratic Convention. This week the Ferguson Police Department commemorated the event by reenacting it. * An Arizona high-school math teacher showed up to her class drunk and continued to consume alcohol

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Times of San Diego profiles SDJW’s Laurie Baron

By Ken Stone Times of San Diego SAN DIEGO–Lawrence “Laurie” Baron is professor emeritus of modern Jewish history at San Diego State. He has a doctorate in modern European intellectual history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He’s an expert on Holocaust films. So what’s a nice Jewish teacher doing writing one-liners like these?

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Ken Stone, Lawrence Baron, San Diego County

Humoring the Headlines: July 25, 2014

  By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─In a vote that split along party lines, the House Committee on Rules approved pursuing John Boehner’s lawsuit against President Obama. Coincidentally, President Obama introduced legislation to ban frivolous lawsuits. * Fiscal hawks are losing their plumage. Rick Perry dispatched 1,000 members of the Texas National Guard to deter unaccompanied

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire