The institute was founded in May 1992, a few months after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the People's Republic of China in January of that year.
It offers courses in Jewish studies which now enroll over 200 students each year, has published a one-volume Chinese version of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, and other publications.
[1] It held an International Seminar on Holocaust and Genocide in World War II on August 7–12, 2005, in Nanjing.
It was given its present name after the construction of a quarters for it from the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation in a new building at the University in 2006.
It is planned that it will become part of a larger Nanjing University–Johns Hopkins University Institute for International Research.