Professor Rodrigue is a historian of modern Jewish history, and specializes in the history and culture of Sephardic Jews. His research interests also extend to France, the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean region. He received his PhD from Harvard. His books include Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries (with Esther Benbassa), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; Jews and Muslims: Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries, 1860-1939, Seattle: University of Washington Press: 2003. Rodrigue was the Ina Levine Senior Scholar in Residence at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2003-2004, and received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1998-99; a Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship, 1998-99; and a National Jewish Book Council Honor Award in Sephardic Studies, 1994. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and is the Chairman for the department of history.