He obtained his B.A. (1973), M.A. (1975) Ph.D. (1979) from Harvard University, and has been at Columbia since 1980. His dissertation, ''Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855'', was published in 1983.
Other notable books by Stanislawski include ''Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky'' (2001), ''For Whom Do I Toil?: Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry'' (1988), ''Autobiographical Jews'' (2004).
His most recent book, ''A Murder in Lemberg'' (2007), chronicles the murder of a reformist rabbi by an Orthodox Jew in the Ukrainian city of Lemberg (now Lviv).
Stanislawski is credited as being a key intellectual in the transformation of Jewish historiography that has "embedded the narrative about the Jews in the context of Enlightenment thought, national politics, and the treatment of minorities generally."