Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American historian and the Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Born in 1954 in Ein HaHoresh, Israel, he is considered a leading authority on genocide. His parents were Zionists who fought in the 1948 Palestine war, and Bartov himself fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a company commander.

Bartov received his education at Tel Aviv University and earned a D.Phil. from St Antony's College, Oxford.