Vision and Visionaries
Conference
April 6, 2008
Vision and Visionaries:
Imagining Israel at 60
Sachar International Center
This conference is free and open to the public.
Space is limited. Please reserve a place by registering through the(click on online form) online form .
Parking is available in T Lot.
For questions and directions, please email scis@brandeis.edu or call 781-736-2152 .
Program
Sunday, April 6, 2008
1:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Greetings:
Jehuda Reinharz, President, Brandeis University
Remarks:
Lynn Schusterman, Chair, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation
Panel Discussion:
S. Ilan Troen, Director, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
Moderator
An Old-New Meta Narrative: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State
Ruth Gavison, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hillel Halkin, Author & Journalist, Israel
Imagining Israel in the Region and the World
David Makovsky, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Keynote Lecture
Israel at 60: From Utopia to Reality?
Shlomo Avineri, Hebew University of Jerusalem
About the Speakers
Shlomo Avineri is a professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He has held visiting appointments at universities across the United States and Europe, and has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1996 he received the Israel Prize, the country's highest civilian decoration. A prolific author, his most recent book is an intellectual biography of Theodore Herzl.Ruth Gavison is the Haim H. Cohn Professor of Human Rights in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and President of Metzilah - Center for Zionist, Jewish, Liberal and Humanist Thought. Gavison served as a founding member and president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). She has held visiting appointments Yale and USC law schools, and was a fellow at the Princeton Center for Human Values. Gavison won the Avihai Prize (with R. Yaacov Medan) for the Gavison-Medan New Covenant on State and Religion Issues Among Jews in Israel), the Jerusalem Toleration Prize, and the E.M.E.T prize in law. Her most recent work is an essay titled "Where There is No Vision the People Will Cast Off Restraint: A Metapurpose for Israel and Its Implications" (2007).
Hillel Halkin, translator, journalist, and prolific author, has rendered over 50 works of fiction, poetry, and drama from Hebrew and Yiddish into English, including works by S.Y. Agnon, Sholem Aleichem, Amos Oz, and Shulamit Hareven. He served as the Israel correspondent for the New York weekly Forward from 1993 through 1996, and has written for Commentary and The New Republic. Halkin was also the weekly book reviewer for The Jerusalem Report from 1990 to 1993 and now serves as a regular columnist and contributing editor of The New York Sun. He received a National Jewish Book Award for his first book Letters To An American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic (1976). In 2002 he received the Lucy Dawidowicz History Prize for Beyond The Sabbath River. Presently, Halkin is translating novels by S.Y. Agnon and the Soviet Yiddish author Moyshe Kulbak, and is writing a book Yehuda Halevi for the Schocken Books/Nextbook Series.
David Makovsky is a senior fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Since 2000, he has served as an adjunct professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, and has published several monographs and numerous press articles in leading American newspapers on Arab-Israel relations. He has appeared on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer among other places, and also served as a contributing editor and special correspondent of US News and World Report. He is currently co-authoring a book with Dennis Ross on the Middle East.
Lynn Schusterman chairs the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. Established in 1987 and dedicated to spreading the joy of Jewish culture, heritage and values, the Foundation also assists non-sectarian charitable organizations throughout Oklahoma. She also chairs the Schusterman Foundation – Israel and the Center for Leadership Initiatives, which develops Jewish professional and volunteer leadership at nonprofit organizations. Lynn’s support for higher education includes gifts to the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas and Brandeis University. In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Lynn currently serves in leadership roles at BBYO, Birthright Israel Foundation, Hillel, Israel Museum, JDC, and STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal).
S. Ilan Troen is the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Chair in Israel Studies and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Formerly he served as director of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute and Archives in Sede Boker, Israel. He is the founding editor of Israel Studies, an international journal sponsored by Brandeis University and Ben-Gurion University. He has authored or edited 11 books in American, Jewish, and Israeli history including, most recently, Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement and, with Jacob Lassner, Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined.The Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
is dedicated to promoting exemplary teaching and scholarship in Israeli history, politics, culture, and society at Brandeis University and beyond. The Center is committed to advancing knowledge and understanding of the modern State of Israel by training a new generation of scholars and teachers, building a vibrant academic community, and supporting research, publications, and conferences. It seeks to make Brandeis a hub for nurturing and catalyzing Israel Studies. www.brandeis.edu/israelcenter, 781-736-2152