Ephraim Isaac

He founded the Institute of Semitic Studies, which he directs from his home in Princeton, NJ,[1] and is the chair of his Ethiopian Peace and Development Center.

Committed to this emerging field of scholarship, Isaac continued as a faculty member until 1977 and taught almost half of the students enrolled in the program.

Isaac had a long-running dispute with the president of Harvard regarding the denial of his strong nomination for tenure by the then Department of African American Studies.

[9] In November 2021, Canadian author Jeff Pearce leaked a video that appeared to show Isaac in a virtual meeting with Eleni Gabre-Madhin and several Western diplomats working to topple Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government to create a transitional government in favor of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) during the Tigray War.

The committee – a dozen Ethiopian elders – facilitated bilateral negotiations between the government and conflicting parties at home and abroad.

The committee also helped raise funds to defray the cost of the Addis Ababa Conference for a Peaceful and Democratic Transition at the end of the war.

Isaac has also negotiated the release of about 35,000 prisoners and has helped organize inter-political party dialogues, an election board, national police chiefs and justices seminars.

This was done in cooperation with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and other experts, and an interfaith symposium to promote the value of democratic and human rights to strengthen peace and reconciliation efforts.

In 2009, he was actively engaged behind the scenes in the Ethiopian government treaty with a major branch of the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Isaac is currently the international chair of the Horn of Africa Board of Peace and Development Organization (Addis Ababa, Asmara) and the former president of the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America.

Isaac is a member of the board or advisory council of several interfaith and intercultural groups and organizations, nationally and internationally.

Between 1994 and 2005 (New York, NY), he was an active member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy at the height of their involvement with the Northern Ireland peace process.