AJU is host to the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program, which prepares students to convert to Judaism and engages interfaith couples and families, as well as three think tanks: the Institute on American Jewish-Israel Relations, and the Sigi Ziering Institute for Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust and the Center for Policy Options.

Its largest component is its Whizin Center for Continuing Education in which 12,000 students are enrolled annually in non-credit granting courses.

The spiritual founder was Mordecai Kaplan, a Jewish thinker and philosopher whose goal was to create an institution representing the diversity of Judaic expression in the United States.

[3] The American Jewish University's Familian campus in Bel Air, California was sold to the Milken Community School in 2024.

AJU is continuing to maintain its administrative offices on site and run the mikvah for three to five years per the sale agreement.

Previously, the university provided in-person undergraduate programs through the College of Arts and Sciences at its Familian Campus in Bel Air.

[8] In June 2024, AJU announced that the current board chair, Harold Masor, and his wife, Amy, donated $4.5 million and that the School for Jewish Education and Leadership would be renamed in their honor.

Following the sale of AJU's Familian Campus in 2024, the Ziegler School, the university's last in-person degree program, relocated to a new facility in Beverly Hills, California.

Featured speakers have included President Bill Clinton, Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, as well as Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.