Ronit Y. Stahl is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and a faculty affiliate of the religious diversity cluster of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. She is a historian of modern America and her work focuses on religious pluralism in American society by examining how politics, law, and religion interact in institutions. Her first book, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2017) demonstrates how, despite the constitutional separation of church and state, the federal government authorized and managed religion in the military. Placing Jewish chaplains in this context reveals and highlights how Judaism came to stand for a mainstream, rather than minority, American religion. Her new book project turns to religious freedom and conscience rights in health care, examining how a variety of religious hospitals — Jewish and non-Jewish — pivoted between framing themselves as secular institutions and religious spaces over the twentieth century. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, a M.A. in Social Sciences in Education from Stanford University, and a B.A. in English from Williams College.
