Dr. Arlene Lazarowitz received her doctorate in United States political history and foreign policy from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1982. Her research interests include the politics and foreign relations of the early Cold War years. She recently published an article on Post-World War II United States-Japanese relations, and her manuscript, "The Influence of the United States Air Force on the Creation of the National Security State During the Truman Years," is being reviewed by a history journal.  

She has taught at California State University, Long Beach since 1984, where she teaches courses in world history, United States foreign relations, and American Jewish History. Before that she taught at Long Beach City College.  

Dr. Lazarowitz is currently researching the role Senator Jacob K. Javits (R-New York) played in drafting the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that tied American trade policy with the Soviet Union to the emigration of Soviet Jews. The Feinstein Center for the Study of American Jewish History at Temple University awarded her a research fellowship, which she used to do research in the Javits papers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and in the pertinent Nixon Administration papers at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland last summer. The College of Liberal Arts also contributed to that research trip. She presented papers on her research at the Midwest Jewish Studies Conference in Chicago in late October 2001 and at the Western Jewish Studies Conference in the Bay Area March 2002.