[2] Nathan was educated at Berkhamsted Boys School in Hertfordshire, and subsequently studied wool manufacture at the Scottish Woollen Technical College in Galashiels, Scotland.

[citation needed] Nathan was the founding Chairman of The Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations (1998–2003) (now The Woolf Institute) in Cambridge, which is devoted to teaching, research and dialogue between the three Abrahamic faiths.

He was a Board Member of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and was Life President of the Support Group for the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex.

[6] In 2004 Nathan established the Clemens Nathan Research Centre, organizing numerous international conferences and publishing many books on human rights [7][8] As a result of his work, amongst other public engagements he gave a lecture at The Peace Palace in the Hague for a conference on reparations hosted by REDRESS, entitled 'The Relevance of Post-Holocaust Experience',[9] and he was invited to lecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 on 'Human Rights in the 21st Century'.

[12] He was President of the Anglo-Jewish Association (1983–1989), Joint Chairman of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations (CCJO), and a director of the Sephardi Centre in London.

[19][20] The book's foreword is written by UNESCO Secretary General Audrey Azoulay and contains 18 essays including ones by Lord Williams and President Jimmy Carter.