Amb. Itamar Rabinovich

President Emeritus & Counsel

President Emeritus and Counsel; former Ambassador of Israel to the U.S. and Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University

Amb. Itamar Rabinovich, founding president of the Israel Institute, is Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and former chief negotiator with Syria in the mid 1990’s as well as the former president of Tel Aviv University (1999-2007). Currently, he is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University, distinguished global professor at New York University, and a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. Rabinovich has been a member of Tel Aviv University’s faculty since 1971 and served as the Ettinger Professor of the Contemporary History of the Middle East, Chairman of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Dean of Humanities, and Rector. He is the Vice Chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an external institute of Tel Aviv University, and a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center. He is co-editor of the Center’s new review journal, Bustan.

Amb. Rabinovich is the author of six books on the Modern History and Politics of the Middle East and the co-author and co-editor of several other volumes and he is the author of numerous essays and papers. His most recent books are Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman (Jewish Lives) (Yale University Press, March 2017), The View from Damascus (updated, paperback edition, London, September 2011), and The Lingering Conflict: Israel, The Arabs, and The Middle East (Brookings Institution Press, December 2011).

Over the years, Amb. Rabinovich has held several public positions in Israel and in other countries. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Dan David Foundation, a member of the Advisory Council of APCO Worldwide, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Wexner-Israel Program, a member of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Brookings Institution in Washington, and a member of the International Advisory Board of The American Interest. He has also held visiting appointments in several academic institutions, including the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Toronto. He was, for several years, the Andrew White Professor at Large at Cornell University, and has recently served as a visiting professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and at the Hoover Institution.

Amb. Rabinovich is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded the Honorary Grand Golden Cross of the Austrian Republic and has been made by the Government of the French Republic a Commandeur l’ordre des Palmes Académiques. In 2009, he was awarded the Korn-Gerstenman Prize for contribution to peace in the Middle East.