Our Visiting Professor and Faculty Fellow Programs bring Israeli academics to universities in the United States and Europe to teach about modern Israel.
The Israel Institute helps universities and scholars meet today’s growing interest in Israel Studies by providing teaching and research resources that will broaden the field and make Israel Studies less reliant on other disciplines. These programs, all geared to professors and students, encourage new scholarship, lead to the development of new courses, and expand learning opportunities.
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Beyond the Books: Grantee Spotlight
Einat Lavee
2016-2017 Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Haifa
Q:
What inspired you to devote your career to researching issues of poverty, family, and motherhood?
A:
As an undergraduate psychology student, I volunteered in a battered women’s shelter, where I heard stories from many women: Jews and Arabs, secular and orthodox, native Israelis and immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. Through their stories, I was exposed to an unfamiliar reality, where survival is not a TV show but a daily struggle. All of the women at the shelter were mothers. The difficulties they faced were always told as part of their maternal role, such as their commitment to protect their children and fulfill their basic needs. These stories shocked and saddened me, and they stay with me to this day.
When I began delving into poverty studies, I noticed that the study and research of poverty, specifically motherhood, in Israel was quite limited. I also realized that we cannot understand the daily realities of living in poverty without first understanding poverty’s social and political contexts. My theoretical interests shifted to sociology, and I began to focus on the social structures that lead women, especially mothers, to a life in poverty. These theoretical understandings, along with a sense of responsibility derived from my relatively privileged position in Israeli society, led me to establish myself as a feminist poverty researcher.
Ned Lazarus
2016-2017 Teaching Fellow, George Washington University
Q:
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict galvanizes academics and activists alike; however, from an outside perspective, peace building efforts seem to have little effect on such an intractable conflict. What inspires you to research and teach on the Conflict?
A:
Through my research, I have been privileged to meet hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians who strive to humanize perceptions of the other and advocate for nonviolence, to end the occupation and challenge the separate, hostile and unequal status quo that prevails between their societies, to build foundations for a more just and peaceful future - so I never lack for inspiration. It's undeniable that during the two decades I've spent on this work, conflict dynamics have gone from bad to worse, and civil society efforts rarely reached the scale necessary to influence macro-political discourse and policy outcomes. At the same time, I have witnessed countless examples of profound change at interpersonal, local and communal levels and sometimes more. The field of civil society peace and conflict resolution is more active, diverse, reflective and resilient than is commonly recognized; today's initiatives often integrate peacebuilding content into areas of clear mutual interest - economic development, emergency response, energy, environmental protection, health, medicine, science and technology among other fields, alongside the classic approaches of advocacy, dialogue, education, track two diplomacy and nonviolent protest. Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding efforts have produced innovative models - for bilingual, dual-narrative education and environmental peacebuilding, among other examples - that can offer inspiration for societies in conflict around the world.