8 May 2017 “Iran, Israel and the USA in a Changing Middle East” Prof. David Menashri (Tel Aviv University)

Prof. David Menashri is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University and Senior Research Fellow at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies and the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University (TAU). Menashri founded and was the first Director the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies and is internationally recognized Iran scholar. He has been a visiting Fulbright scholar at Princeton and Cornell University, and, among others, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Yale, UCLA, Oxford, Melbourne and Monash Universities (Australia), the Universities of Munich and Mainz (Germany) and Waseda (Tokyo). In the late 1970s, Menashri spent two years conducting research and field studies in Iranian universities on the eve of the Islamic Revolution with a grant from Ford Foundation. Prof. Menashri’s publications includes: Post-Revolutionary Politics in Iran: Religion, Society and Power; Revolution at A Crossroads: Iran’s Domestic Challenges and Regional Ambitions; Iran: Between Islam and the West (Hebrew); Education and the Making of Modern Iran; Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution; Iran in Revolution (Hebrew).
He is also the editor of “Iran: Anatomy of Revolution” (together with Liora Hendelman-Baavur, 2009, Hebrew); Religion and State in the Middle East (Hebrew); Central Asia Meets the Middle East; and The Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World.

27 April 2017 “Israeli Women between Sexual Harassment and Religious (Jewish and Muslim) Family Law” Prof. Orit Kamir (Center for Human Dignity)

Prof. Orit Kamir publishes, teaches and is socially active in three interdisciplinary areas: 1.Dignity, respect and honor as moral/ethical values, bedrocks of social structures, and foundations of legislation and policy making; 2. Law-and-Film: analysis of mutual influences of two powerful contemporary discourses, that have substantial impact on the creation and determination of individuals’

30 March 2017 “Threats to Democracy in Israel” Prof. Itzhak Galnoor  (Hebrew University Jerusalem and The Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem)
   

Prof. Itzhak Galnoor is the Herbert Samuel Professor of Political Science (emeritus) at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been a Visiting Professor at many international universities, and served on the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and edited its Advances in Political Science book series, published by Cambridge University Press.
Galnoor was Head of the Civil Service Commission in the Government headed by Itzhak Rabin; A member of the Israel Science Foundation’s Executive Committee and in charge of its Humanities and Social Sciences division (2001-2007); on the Governing Board of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2003-2007); Deputy Chair of the Council for Higher Education 2007-2008. He is the head of the Israeli Political Science Association (2012-). Since 2007 he is a Senior Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Academic Director of the State Responsibility and the Limits of Privatization project at the Chazan Center for Social Justice. His book (with Dr. Dana Blander) The Israeli Political System (2013) is forthcoming in English in 2016 at Cambridge University Press.
In June 2015 Galnoor was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of Israel Studies (AIS).

4 May 2016 “Vom leisen Schreiben des lauteren Worts” David Grossman at the Akademietheater 

   
                                                                    © Michael Lionstar

David Grossman was born in 1954 in Jerusalem. He studied philosophy and drama at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later worked as an editor and broadcaster at the Israel Radio Station. Grossmans oeuvre consists of novels, short stories and novellas, drama, and a number of books for children and youth. He has also published several books of non-fiction, including interviews with Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.
Among Grossman’s many literary awards:  the Bialik Prize (2004), the Koret Jewish Book Award (USA, 2006), the EMET Prize (Israel, 2007), the Geschwister Scholl Prize (Germany, 2008),  and the Man Booker International Prize for A Horse Walks into a Bar (UK, 2017). Grossman was also decorated as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 1998) and received an Honorary Doctorate from Florence University (2008). His books have been published in 35 languages.

David Grossman im Gespräch mit Heinz Sichrovsky (ORF)

14 April 2016 “Israel and Europe” Amb. Prof. Élie Barnavi (Tel Aviv University)

Prof. Élie Barnavi is Professor of European Early Modern History at Tel Aviv University (emeritus) and Scientific Advisor to the Museum of Europe in Brussels. From 2000 to 2002 he served as the Ambassador of Israel to France. Élie Barnavi wrote some twenty books on France and Europe in the turmoil of the Religious Wars and on the contemporary history of Israel and of the Jewish people.
He published numerous studies in professional journals in Europe, the US, and Canada, as well as political articles in the Israeli and European press.

21 January 2016 „Politik und Erinnerung: Israel, die beiden deutschen Staaten und Österreich“  Prof. Angelika Timm (Freie Universität  Berlin, Bar-Ilan University)

Prof. Angelika Timm received a Ph. D. in the history of Palestine from Humboldt University, Berlin where she was the head of the Seminar for Israel Studies until 1998. She had a research position at the Free University in Berlin (1999 to 2002) and taught as a guest professor at the Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel (2002-2007). She was the director of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Israel Office 2008 – 2015.
Angelika Timm’s research fields include history and politics of Israel, including Israeli civil society, and German-Israeli relations. Amongst her central publications are Jewish Claims against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy, Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997; Hammer, Zirkel, Davidstern – Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Zionismus und Staat Israel, Bonn: Bouvier, 1997; Israel – Geschichte des Staates seit seiner Gründung, Bonn: Bouvier, 1998; Israel – Gesellschaft im Wandel, Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2003.

2 December 2015 “David Ben Gurion” Prof. Anita Shapira (Tel Aviv University)

Prof. Anita Shapira the former Ruben Merenfeld Professor in the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University, former dean of the faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University and head of the Rabin Center. She served in many public bodies, such as the Council for higher education, the claims conference, and also was the president of the Memorial foundation of Jewish culture. Shapira specializes in modern and contemporary Jewish history, especially in social and cultural history and questions of identity. She taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and the Maximilian University in Munich. She published numerous books and articles on the history of Zionism, the Jewish community in Palestine and the state of Israel. Her best-known works are “Berl Katznelson: a Biography of a Socialist Zionist” (CUP), “Land and Power, the Zionist Resort to Force, 1882-1948”(OUP and Stanford UP), “Yigal Allon: Native Son” (Pennsylvania UP), “Yosef Hayyim Brenner, A Life Story” (Stanford UP). Her comprehensive book “Israel: A History” (Brandeis UP), won the National Jewish Book Award in 2012. Recently she published “Ben Gurion: The Founder of Modern Israel” (Yale UP). She won many prizes and awards. In 2008 she was awarded the Israel Prize in history.

12 October 2015 “Israel and the New (Dis) order in the Middle East” Amb. Prof. Itamar Rabinovich (New York University, Tel Aviv University)

Amb. Prof. Itamar Rabinovich is founding President of the Israel Institute, a Distinguished Global Professor at New York University, and Non-Resident Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy. He is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University and the University’s former President. Ambassador Rabinovich has been a member of the faculty of Tel Aviv University since 1971 and served as Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Director of the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Dean of the Humanities, and Rector. From 1992-1996, he was Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and chief negotiator with Syria. Ambassador Rabinovich’s most recent books are The Lingering Conflict: Israel, The Arabs and the Middle East (2011) and The View from Damascus (2009). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and a member of the Trilateral Commission. He earned a B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an M.A. from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.