He was the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History and Director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis.
On September 25, 2009, Reinharz announced his retirement as President of Brandeis,[1] but at the request of the Board of Trustees, he stayed on until a replacement could be hired.
For three years (1958-1961), he attended high school in Essen, Germany, and moved with his family to the United States as a teenager in 1961.
[citation needed] His wife, Shulamit Reinharz, was the Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University and founded and directed the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women's Studies Research Center.
In 1982, he became the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University.
On January 1, 2011, Reinharz was officially replaced by Frederick M. Lawrence,[1] and on that date, he became president of the Mandel Foundation.
Reinharz is twice the recipient of the President of Israel Prize, awarded by the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) in 1990 and 2024, in recognition of his scholarly publications.
In 1998, Reinharz was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States.
In October 2005 he co-edited with Shulamit Reinharz and Motti Golani the letters and documents relating to the life and times of Manya Shochat, a remarkable pioneer of the Second Aliyah.
In 2013 Reinharz co-authored The Road to September 1939 with Yaacov Shavit (an English expanded version in 2018), as well as Die Sprache der Judenfeindschaft im 21.