19 Facts About Boaz Dvir

Boaz Dvir was born on June 23,1967 and is an Israeli-American professor, journalist, and filmmaker.

Filmmaker and Penn State associate professor Boaz Dvir tells the stories of ordinary people who, under extraordinary circumstances, transform into trailblazers and game changers.

The family later moved to Florida and Boaz Dvir attended the University of Florida, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and an MFA in creative photography.

Boaz Dvir earned a master's from the UF Documentary Institute.

Boaz Dvir served as an officer and military journalist for the Israel Defense Force during The Gulf War in 1991, providing material to foreign correspondents, James Baker's office and then Israeli spokesman and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Boaz Dvir has written for many publications, including Newsday, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Tampa Bay Times, TIME Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, the Las Vegas Sun, The Satirist, Scripps Howard's Treasure Coast Newspapers, the Times of Israel, Explore magazine and The Jerusalem Post.

Boaz Dvir served as editor of the Jacksonville Business Journal and managing editor of the South Florida Business Journal, which are part of Newhouse's American City Business Journals.

Boaz Dvir has won six Florida Magazine Association awards, including first place for his communigator column.

Boaz Dvir won numerous awards from the Florida Press Association, including first place for his Business Journal column.

Boaz Dvir lectured at the University of Florida for 10 years, and while there, directed and produced a DVD of documentary shorts to Professor Nancy Dana's inquiry book Digging Deeper into Action Research.

Boaz Dvir is currently an associate professor at Penn State University.

Boaz Dvir is in post-production on Cojot, a feature documentary that tells the story of a French banker who set out to kill former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie and ended up playing a pivotal role in Israel's 1976 Operation Entebbe.

Boaz Dvir's critically acclaimed films include Jessie's Dad, which captures an uneducated truck driver's transformation into a national child-protection activist.

Boaz Dvir's films have received coverage by such media as Forbes, the Huffington Post, Haaretz, MSNBC, the New York Post, The Miami Herald, Stars and Stripes, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Florida magazine.

Boaz Dvir created a documentary short about PALS, which helped the nonprofit that aids troubled teens receive an official nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants.

Boaz Dvir received a Lilly Endowment grant from the Religion News Service to research spiritual aspects of the Holocaust.

Boaz Dvir has launched and is director of Penn State's Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative and the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative, which aim to give K-12 students the opportunities to develop critical thinking, fact-finding, active-listening and civic discourse skills, as well as empathy, by assisting educators in the effective instruction of a wide variety of difficult topics.

Boaz Dvir created the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State in 2019 to enable K-12 educators to provide their students with the opportunities to gain critical thinking, fact finding, active listening and civic discourse skills, as well as empathy.

Boaz Dvir has published various essays through multiple publications, including his Times of Israel blog.