Prof. Ilan Troen '63 elected president of the Association for Israel Studies

Troen, the Karl, Harry and Helen Stoll Professor of Israel Studies, assumed the presidency June 3

Photo/Mike Lovett

Ilan Troen

Ilan Troen ’63, the Karl, Harry and Helen Stoll Professor of Israel Studies at Brandeis University, has been elected president of the Association for Israel Studies, the preeminent international society for scholarship and research of modern Israel. He formally assumed the presidency at the association’s annual meeting June 3 in Montreal.

Formed in 1985, the association sponsors panels and workshops, distributes awards for books, papers and dissertations, and holds an annual conference, which draws hundreds of the world’s top scholars on Israel. Along with individual members, the Association for Israel Studies has six institutional members, including the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis.

“The Association for Israel Studies brings together the leading minds on this emerging field, and I am honored to lead it,” Troen said.

Throughout his academic career, Troen has been on the forefront in developing scholarship on modern Israel. Prior to coming to Brandeis, he was director of the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, akin to an American presidential library, and was the founding dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University.  

He has served as director of the Schusterman Center since it was founded in 2007 and is the founding director of the Brandeis Summer Institute for Israel Studies, established in 2004. He has published and edited numerous books and served as a visiting scholar at universities in the United States, Israel, Europe and Australia. 

With Troen’s election, Brandeis faculty hold the presidencies of two of the leading professional organizations supporting modern Israel and Jewish Studies scholarship. In January 2014, Jonathan D. Sarna, ’75, MA ’75, the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History and chair of the Hornstein Program for Jewish Professional Leadership, was elected president of the Association for Jewish Studies, the world’s largest learned society and professional organization representing Jewish Studies scholars.