Dr. David Elcott-Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service & Leadership @ Wagner School & Author

Everyone has their own belief in religion. I spoke with Dr. David Elcott because he has his own beliefs and he wanted to be heard. He has being doing research and Keepin It Real was interested in the research and wanted to know more about it. David Elcott has spent the last thirty years at the intersection of community building, the search for a theory of cross-boundary engagement, and interfaith and ethnic organizing and activism. Trained in political psychology and Middle East affairs at Columbia University and Judaic studies at the American Jewish University, Dr. Elcott is the Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU and faculty director of the Advocacy and Political Action specialization at Wagner. Over the past twelve years, Dr. Elcott has worked to build a robust training program of community organizing and advocacy campaigns housed at Wagner to effectively address the pressing domestic and international issues we faceDr. Elcott was formally the Vice-President of the National Center for Learning and Leadership, a think-tank tasked with training community leaders to rethink the nature of contemporary community and civic obligation. As Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee and as the Executive Director of the Israel Policy Forum, David has addressed a wide array of public policy issues, building interfaith and interethnic coalitions to address Middle East peace, immigration reform, civil liberties and criminal justice reform. He has mediated conflicts between and among religious communities in the U.S. and around the world, finding collaborations and solutions on issues as diverse as posthumous Mormon Baptisms, financing the World Lutheran Federation’s hospital in Jerusalem, the conflicts over The Passion of the Christ, and Israeli-Palestinian issues with many members of the National Council of Churches and the Catholic Church while working with Israelis and Palestinians on non-violent activism. For decades, he also ha