About Phyllis
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D, is an Emerita Professor of Psychology at City University of New York. She is a best-selling author, a legendary feminist leader, and a retired psychotherapist. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious, and human rights campaigns in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Central Asia, and the Far East.
She is the author of twenty books, has introduced or contributed to more than fifty anthologies, and has penned many thousands of articles. Her books include the landmark feminist classics Women and Madness (1972), Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (1986), Letters to a Young Feminist (1998), and Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman (2002); The New Antisemitism (2003), An American Bride in Kabul (2013), which won a National Jewish Book Award, Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews: 2003-2015 (2015), Islamic Gender Apartheid: Exposing a Veiled War Against Women (2017) A Politically Incorrect Feminist (2018), and Requiem for A Female Serial Killer (2020).
Dr. Chesler’s work has been translated into many European languages, including French, German, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian, and into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hebrew, and Arabic and has been cited at least 4500 times in academic journals on literally every continent.
Since 9/11, Dr. Chesler has focused on the rights of women, dissidents, and gays in the Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim communities; the rights of women in prison; the rise of anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism, the demonization of Israel, the nature of terrorism, forced veiling, forced marriage, polygamy, and tribal psychology. Dr. Chesler has conducted four studies about honor killing. These studies have all appeared in Middle East Quarterly. Based on this academic work, she has submitted affidavits for Muslim and ex-Muslim women who are seeking asylum or citizenship based on their credible belief that their families will honor kill them. In 2021-2022, Dr. Chesler co-led a team which rescued four hundred women from Afghanistan. That work continues.
Dr. Chesler is a co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women’s Health Network (1975) and a founding member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the Academic Freedom Alliance, and the anti-Islamist Clarity Coalition. She was a Senior Fellow at the Investigative Project on Terrorism; a Writing Fellow at The Middle East Forum, and a Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP).
Dr. Chesler is also a founding member of the Original Women of the Wall. She has been profiled in encyclopedias such as Feminists Who Have Changed America, Encyclopedia Judaica, Jewish Women in America, and at the Veteran Feminists of America’s website.
She has archived most of her articles at her website: https://www.phyllis-chesler.com/articles
- My Feminist Autobiography
- Academic CV (Forensic, General)
- Curriculum Vitae (Judaism/Jewish World)
- Feminists Who Changed America
- The Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Her Time
- Entry on Phyllis Chesler in Encyclopedia Judaica
- Entry on Phyllis Chesler in Jewish Women in America
- Phyllis Chesler's Facebook Page
- Jewish Women’s Archive