Steve Zipperstein

Steven E. Zipperstein is an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Luskin School of Public Affairs. He serves as Director of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. He is also a Distinguished Senior Scholar at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development. He is also a lecturer with UCLA’s Global Studies Program and UCLA’s School of Engineering, a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University Law School, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Hertie School in Berlin. He is also a Senior Fellow with The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation in the Netherlands.

Zipperstein is the author of three recent peer-reviewed books regarding the legal history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Legal Case for Palestine: A Critical Assessment (Routledge, 2024), Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939-1948 (Routledge, 2022), and Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Trials of Palestine (Routledge 2020).

Zipperstein has authored several peer-reviewed papers and articles, and has testified before the United States Congress several times regarding telecommunications and internet policy issues.  Zipperstein lectures widely regarding the Middle East, as well as advanced technology and cybersecurity.

Zipperstein has also practiced law for more than 40 years in California, Washington D.C. and New York/New Jersey, and has been elected to the American Law Institute and named a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. During his legal career, Zipperstein worked as a law firm litigator, a federal prosecutor, and as the Chief Legal Officer of BlackBerry Ltd. and Verizon Wireless. Zipperstein served as Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno during the 1995 congressional hearings regarding the events in Waco, Texas, and as Counselor for former Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller regarding the 1992-93 congressional investigation of the “Iraq-gate” matter. As a federal prosecutor, Zipperstein tried more than a dozen felony jury cases and argued 23 cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.