BA (Hons), University of Sydney, 1967; MA (Hons), University of Melbourne, 1970; PhD, Australian National University, 1981.

Honorary Professor in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, John researches and writes in the fields of genocide and massacre studies, cultural theory, the Enlightenment, monotheism and polytheism, intellectual history, historiography, diaspora, ethnic and cultural identity, and the history of Zionism and Israel-Palestine.

John is currently working on several projects. One is a book entitled Sheer Folly and Derangement: Disorienting Europe and the West. Another is a research project entitled “The Rebecca File: The Strange Afterlife of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe’s Rebecca in the Nineteenth Century”. Another is an intellectual autobiography, tentatively entitled Growing Up Communist and Jewish in Bondi: A Memoir.