Shlomo Avineri

Shlomo Avineri "is Herbert Samuel Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"Born in Poland in 1933, he has lived in Israel since 1939. He studied at the Hebrew University and the London School of Economics and has held visiting appointments at Yale, Cornell, the University of California, Wesleyan University, City University of New York, Oxford, Australian National University, Central European University in Budapest, Cardozo School of Law in New York and Northwestern University. At the Hebrew University he held the positions of Chair of the Department of Political Science, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Director of the Institute for European Studies.

"He was also visiting scholar at the Wilson Center, the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (all in Washington D.C.), Collegium Budapest, as well as the Institute of World Economics and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. He is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Applied Political Research (CAP) affiliated with Munich University, and Recurring Visiting Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at CEU (Budapest).

"During 1975-77 he was Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Yitzhak Rabin. He also headed the Israeli delegation to the UNESCO General Assembly, and in 1979 was member of the joint Egyptian-Israeli commission that drafted the Cultural and Scientific Agreement between the two countries.

"In 1996 he was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian decoration, and in 2006 he received the Israel Political Science Association Award for his contribution to the discipline in Israel and abroad.

"During 1990-92 he was a member of an international team of observers under the auspices of the National Democratic Institute for the first post-communist elections in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Estonia and Croatia as well as other NDI international missions to Ukraine, Serbia, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, Albania and Georgia.

"His books, which have been translated into many languages, include: The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, Varieties of Marxism, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Israel and the Palestinians, The Making of Modern Zionism, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, Communitarianism and Individualism (with Avner de-Shalit), The Law of Religious Identity: Models for Post-Communism (with Andras Sajo), Integration and Identity and Politics and Identities in Transformation (both with Werner Weidenfeld), and Europe’s Century of Discontent: The Legacies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism (with Zeev Sternhell). He participated in preparing a Hebrew edition of Theodor Herzl’s Diaries and wrote the historical introduction to the 3-volume edition. Recently he prepared an English edition, with an Introduction, of Moses Hess' The Holy History of Mankind, published in 2005 in the Cambridge University Press series of texts in the history of political thought.

"He is member of the editorial boards of Political Theory, The Review of Politics, History of European Ideas, Constellations, Dialektik, Marx-Engels-Studien, The Owl of Minerva, Eastern European Politics and Societies, Eastern European Constitutional Review, Israel Studies, Journal of Israeli History and Problems of Philosophy (Moscow). In the past he also served on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review.

"His op-ed articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Welt, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Gazeta Wyborcza (Warsaw), Daily Star (Beirut) and Jordan Times.

"He is member of the International Editorial Board of the complete edition of Marx-Engels Collected Works (MEGA), published in Amsterdam, serves on the Board of Directors of the Civic Education Project (Washington, DC/Budapest) and is member of the Academic Board of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna."


 * Visiting Speaker (APril 2008), B'nai B'rith International