Dr. Rowan Dorin
Assistant Professor of History, Stanford University
Author of No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe

In this presentation on a timely and fascinating topic, Professor Rowan Dorin explores how mass expulsion became a pervasive feature of European law and politics—with tragic consequences that reverberate into the present.

Drawing on his groundbreaking archival research, Dr. Dorin describes how Jewish moneylenders beginning in the 12th century increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities who denounced the evils of usury as they expelled Jews from their lands. Yet Jews were not alone. Foreign Christians also supplied coin and credit to needy borrowers—and they too faced repeated threats of expulsion.

Dr. Dorin is assistant professor of history at Stanford University where his teaching and research focus especially on the movement of people, goods and ideas in the pre-modern world and on the ways in which law and society shape each other. He holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. His book No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press, 2023) has been described as “a masterpiece of legal and historical scholarship [that] speaks to issues of our own day.”

Admission Free • Reception to follow