News & Events

Symposium on American Mediation in the Israeli-Arab Conflict

January 28, 2009 - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

 

The United States-Israel Educational Foundation and two partner institutions held a highly successful symposium on American Mediation in the Israeli-Arab Conflict at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on January 28, 2009.  The symposium was well attended throughout the day, with a peak audience of about 130 for the Ambassador’s round table (see below).  The event also received extensive press coverage, with items broadcast on the Hebrew, Arabic and English radio services of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and on Hebrew and English TV, a lengthy article in the Jerusalem Post, and items in a number of additional media outlets.

 

The high point of the conference was a unique meeting of minds, a round table discussion of America’s role as a mediator in the Israeli-Arab conflict conducted by six former Ambassadors.  The participants, whose terms of service span the last thirty years, were former Israeli Ambassadors Moshe Arens (1982-1983), Moshe Arad (1987-1990), Zalman Shoval (1990-1993, 1998-2000), and Daniel Ayalon (2002-2006); and former US Ambassadors Samuel W. Lewis (1977-1985) and William A. Brown (1988-1992), who were assisted by Dr. Robert Danin, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, currently with the staff of the Quartet’s Jerusalem office.

 

On the basis of their rich diplomatic experience, the Ambassadors analyzed the special nature of United States-Israeli relations and how it influences the mediation efforts of the United States; they presented critical events that reflect the challenges which await the Americans as they come to mediate between Israel and the Arabs; and they drew conclusions from previous American efforts which can help guide the new administrations in the United States and Israel regarding the role of America as mediator in the Middle East conflict.

 

Before the Ambassadors’ panel, lectures were delivered by a number of renowned academic experts, among them Fulbright alumnus Professor Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, who spoke on the topic “US mediation and the regional strategic environment”.  Fulbright recipient Dr. Scott Lasensky chaired the session on “1973 and 1993: the U.S. role from the October War to the Oslo period”.  Bar-Siman-Tov and Lasensky were also members of the symposium steering committee.
 
Professor Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov is Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He serves as Director of the University’s Swiss Center for Conflict Research, Management, and Resolution and as Head of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.  Previously, he headed the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations.  He has published extensively on the Israeli-Arab dispute and peace process, editing and contributing to a number of collections of essays in recent years.  Professor Bar-Siman-Tov was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

 

Dr. Scott Lasensky is a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention of the United States Institute of Peace, specializing in Arab-Israeli relations and US Middle East policy.  He is co-author, with Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, published by the Institute last year.  Dr. Lasensky has been awarded a 2008/2009 Regional Research Fellowship for research to be carried out in the West Bank, Israel, and Syria on "Paying for Peace: America, the Middle East Peace Process, and the Limits of Foreign Aid".

 

Fulbright alumnus Ron Regev performs American composer Richard Wernick's Piano Sonata No. 2

January 27, 2009 - Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance

 

The high point of the festive concert marking the 75th birthday of American composer Richard Wernick, held during the course of his visit to the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in January 2009, was Israeli Fulbright alumnus Dr. Ron Regev's performance of Wernick's Piano Sonata No. 2.  During the course of his week-long stay at the Academy, Wernick gave lectures and workshops for the students and staff.  Wernick's visit was made possible by financial support provided by the United States-Israel Educational Foundation, the Fulbright commission for Israel, and the Embassy of the United States.

 

Richard Wernick is one of the United States most distinguished modern composers.  His many awards include the Pulitzer Prize in Music and two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards First Prizes, making him the only two-time First Prize recipient.  He has been commissioned to compose works by leading ensembles, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Juilliard String Quartet.  From 1968 until his retirement in 1996 he taught at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Prize-winning pianist Ron Regev was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1998 in support of his doctoral studies at the Juilliard Academy of New York.  His doctoral thesis on Mendelssohn's first piano trio won the Richard French Prize, awarded to the best doctoral thesis presented during the Academy's one-hundreth anniversary year.  Dr. Regev has performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and other ensembles. He teaches at the Jerusalem Academy and at the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts. 

 

Israeli Fulbright Alumni Annual Fall Evening

December 14, 2008 - Beit Hatfutzot Diaspora Museum

 

The second in the new series of annual Israeli alumni evenings, marking the beginning of the academic year, was well attended with an audience of over 125, among them more than 60 Fulbright alumni. 

 

After a recemption, the lecture segment of the evening began with greetings delivered by American Ambassador James B. Cunningham.  His remarks were followed by the evening’s main speech, delivered by distinguished Fulbright alumnus Professor Itamar Rabinovich, on the topic “The US and the Middle East in the wake of Obama’s Election”.

 

An internationally renowned historian of the modern Middle East, Professor Rabinovich studied towards his doctorate at UCLA as a Fulbright Fellow.  He is a Senior Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center; incumbent of the University’s Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair in Contemporary History of the Middle East; and also the Andrew White Professor at Large at Cornell University.

 

Professor Rabinovich was Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from 1993-96 and head of Israel’s team for peace negotiations with Syria under the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  Professor Rabinovich has published extensively on Syria, Lebanon, and Israeli-Arab peace negotiations.  His most recent book, The view from Damascus: state, political community and foreign relations in twentieth-century Syria, was released by Valentine Mitchell in autumn 2008.

 

Nationwide Nina Menkes retrospective at Israeli cinematheques

November 2008 - Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem Cinematheques

 

In November 2008 the cinematheques of Israel's major cities - Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa – honored visiting Fulbright Senior Scholar Nina Menkes with a nation-wide retrospective of all her seven films.  Menkes, a member of the staff of the California Institute of the Arts taught and worked at Tel Aviv University during the 2008/2009 academic year.  During the course of her stay in Israel, she completed the plan of a new work, titled tentatively "Raskolnikov in Yafo".

 

Menkes has been the subject of many complete retrospectives and special programs recently, including the Athens International Film Festival and First Art Biennial in Greece (2007), the Prague International Film Festival (2008), Tekfestival in Rome (2008), the Kino Arsenal in Berlin (October 2008), and the Viennale International Film Festival (2007), where Menkes was hailed as “one of greatest figures of feminist New Wave cinema”.

 

Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator at the New York Museum of Modern Art wrote of her works that "Her richly nuanced films are distinguished by luminous, surreal, and often disturbing imagery, and accompanied by soundtracks that are carefully modulated to suggest the simultaneity of the psychological and outside worlds."
 

Fulbright-Schneider Danon Post-Doctoral Researcher Nir Peled wins cancer research award

November 2008

Dr. Nir Peled  has been allocated an $80,000 Young Investigator’s Award by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).  The IASLC  rewards  scientific excellence and encourages innovative investigations in the field of lung cancer prevention research and translational research with a potential impact on the management of lung cancer.

 

Dr. Peled, received his MD from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.   In 2008 he was awarded the Fulbright-Schneider Yehuda Danon Post-Doctoral Fellowship.  He  is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, where his work focuses on early detection of lung cancer by a novel breath analysis method developed in Israel.

  

Dr. Hossam Haick named by Technology Review as one of the world's top young innovators

October 2008 - Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

Technology Review, MIT’s magazine of innovation, named Fulbright alumnus Dr.Hossam Haick of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, as one of 2008’s 35 top young (35 years of age or younger) innovators, whose inventions and research are changing the world.

 

Haick was named to the list in recognition of his leadership in the development of an electronic "nose" that can diagnose cancer in just two or three minutes by analyzing a patient's breath.  According to the Review, "The finished device should be portable and inexpensive, providing a faster, easier, and more sensitive way to screen for tumors.  Such screening should help doctors detect cancer early, when it's most treatable."

 

Since returning from a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, Haick has accumulated an impressive list of scientific honors.  In 2006 he was awarded a 1.75 million Euro research grant by the European Union's Curie Program for the development of nanometric sensors for the early detection of lung cancer, the largest grant ever awarded by the European Union to an Israeli researcher.  In 2007 Dr. Haick and an American partner won a research grant from the American-Israeli Binational Science Foundation for a project on metal-molecule-semiconductor junctions and contacts, with emphasis on understanding the role of pinhole defects.  In addition, Haick was selected by the Foundation to receive one of its Bergmann Memorial Awards, special supplemental funding awarded to young BSF research grant recipients, whose research projects are judged to be of exceptional merit.  In 2008 Dr. Haick was honored by the President of France with the France-Israel Foundation Prize for Excellence in Science.

 

Fulbright Fellow Yael Globerman, poet, author, and translator, reaches out to the American Midwest

August-October 2008 - University of Iowa

 

Fulbright Fellow Yael Globerman played an active role in the success of the 41st session of the University of Iowa's renowned International Writing Program, held in Iowa City in August-October 2008.  According to the Program Director, "At every turn, Ms. Globerman contributed powerfully to the lives of her fellow writers, the students she encountered, and the audiences for whom she presented her work."

 

While advancing her own work, finishing a novella and several new poems, Ms. Globerman was still able to invest fully in her Fulbright role as an ambassador of Israel to the people of the United States, and participated enthusiastically in outreach activities.   On September 7 she gave a reading at the Prairie Lights Books Store in Iowa City.  On September 26 she spoke at a panel discussion at the Iowa City Public Library on the topic "Writing in Translation: Writing Across Languages".  A few days later, she addressed students in the course International Literature Today.  In October she appeared together with another Israel poet and an Iranian poet at a "Middle East Contemporary Poetry" gala in downtown Iowa City.  Finally, in November, she traveled to Chicago at the invitation of Northwestern University to present her work to students and faculty, and to participate in a panel discussion on "Migrating People, Migrating Literature" hosted by the Guild Literary Complex of Chicago.  Ms. Globerman was only the second International Writing Program participant to be so honored.

 

Yael Globerman is the author of the novel Shaking the Tree (1996) and of two poetry collections. Her debut poetry volume, Alibi, received the ACUM Award for Poetry and the PAIS Award. Her latest collection, Same River Twice, was published in 2007, with excerpts appearing in the Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 2008). She is the editor and translator of A Soul’s History: Selected Poems by Stephen Spender (2007); her translations of Ann Sexton are forthcoming in 2009; and a W.H. Auden volume is due in 2010.

 

Globerman has also co-written film scripts and a play. She teaches creative writing at Oranim College, is on the board of the Helicon Society for the Advancement of Poetry, and is an editor of the Society’s poetry magazine.

 

Fulbright alumna Professor Gabriela Shalev appointed Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations

July 20, 2008

 

On July 20, 2008 the Government of Israel approved Professor Gabriela Shalev's appointment as Israel's new Ambassador to the United Nations.

 

Professor Gabriela Shalev received her doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received a Fulbright post-doctoral award in 1974 to conduct research at Harvard University.  Her research interests include contract law, comparative contract law, government contracts, and law and literature.

 

For 38 years Professor Shalev was a member of the academic staff of the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law, and was the first incumbent of the Faculty’s Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Contract Law (1990).  She has held many other positions, as well, among them: Academic President (Rector) of Ono Academic College;  Chairperson of the Ministry of Justice’s Fund for Promotion of Law; Legal Editor of the new edition of The Hebrew Encyclopedia; Member of the Standard Contracts Tribunal; and  Member of the Codification in Civil Law Committee.

 

Pre-Departure Orientation

June 12, 2008 - Center for Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv

 

One hundred and twenty students took part in the orientation, which was designed to meet the needs of Israelis who will begin studies in the United States in the 2008/2009 academic year.

 

The day's program featured a distinguished panel of guest speakers who discussed issues such as academic and cultural adaptation, daily living in the U.S., finances, health insurance, and visa regulations.

 

Lectures by American Distinguished Chair Fellows

May 28, 2008 - Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus campus; May 15, 2008 - Technion

  

On May 28, Professor Robert (KC) Johnson of Brooklyn College, City University of New York, the 2007/2008 Fulbright Distinguished Chair Fellow in the Humanities and Social Sciences, spoke at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on "LBJ and U.S. Diplomacy of the Six Day War: The Secret Presidential Recordings".  Professor Johnson's lecture took place under the auspices of the Swiss Center for Conflict Resolution, headed by Fulbright alumnus Professor Yaacov Bar Siman Tov.

 

During the course of the 2008/2009 academic year Professor Johnson was the guest of the Faculty of Humanities of Tel Aviv University.  He taught courses on American politics and foreign policy, and gave special talks on topics in these fields at the University and at other universities and colleges around the country.  In addition, Professor Johnson worked on completion of a book on US Cold War foreign policy, which is to be published by Cambridge University Press. 

 

On May 15, Professor Gary Eden of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the 2007/2008 Fulbright Distinguished Chair Fellow in the Natural Sciences and Engineering, delivered his Distinguished Chair lecture on the topic: "Probing Fundamental Atomic & Molecular Processes by Femtosecond Lasers: Window onto Dipole-Dipole Interactions and Molecular Dissociation".

 

During the Spring 2008 semester Professor Eden was hosted by the Technion's Physics Department.  His visit was devoted to teaching and research in the fields of plasma devices and femtosecond optical physics. 

 

USIEF expresses gratitude for support of West Side Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations

March 30, 2008 – New York Historical Society, New York City

 

The annual Legislative Breakfast of the West Side Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations (COJO) provided Dr. Neal Sherman, USIEF’s Executive Director, with an opportunity to thank the host organization for its support for the new Fulbright-John Jay College-Israel Police MA in Criminal Justice Fellowship.  COJO backs the program through a contribution to John Jay College.  Sherman noted the importance of exposing selected officers of the Israel Police to American theory and practice in the field of policing, and expressed sincere gratitude to COJO for its assistance in making this possible.

 

COJO is an umbrella organization representing nearly thirty institutions on the West Side of Manhattan, including synagogues, adult education and outreach centers, institutes of higher learning, day schools and others.  COJO arranges for and provides various services to the West Side community by establishing relationships with important local institutions, among them the New York Police Department.  COJO is led by Rabbi Allen Schwartz, President, and Mr. Michael Landau, Chairman.

 

Privatization in Higher Education

January 7-8, 2008 - Neaman Institute, Technion, Haifa

 

Developments in the Israeli higher education system over the past 15 years have created a situation of growing demand for higher education, which cannot be met by limited public sector budgets.  These conditions provide an opportunity for private providers of higher education to increase their share of the education "market". The symposium on "Privatization in Higher Education" provided a forum in which leading experts from Israel, the United States, Europe, Turkey, and India could discuss this situation and the policy challenges which it creates. 

 

The symposium was been organized by the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, the Bashaar-Academic Community for Israeli Society, the Azrieli Center for Economic Policy (ACEP), Department of Economics,  Bar-Ilan University and the United States – Israel Educational Foundation, with the participation of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities.

 

The symposium was a spin-off of the activity of the Higher Education Forum, sponsored by Bashaar, the Neaman Institute and USIEF.  The Forum has convened on a regular basis for the past two years, promoting dialogue on higher education policy issues between leading figures from Israel's research universities and its academic colleges.

 

The symposium program is available on the Neaman Institute website.  A special background paper, prepared by Fulbright alumnus Gury Zilcha, is also available on the Institute website.

 

Fulbright alumni assist in the launch of Azrieli Foundation
Fellows Program

November 8, 2007 - Azrieli Center, Tel Aviv

  

At a ceremony held in the Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv, the Azrieli Foundation announced the first grant recipients of the new Azrieli Fellows Program.   Fulbright alumni were members of two of the Program's three academic review committees.  Professor Uri Banin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1994 Post-Doctoral Fellow; Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) served on the Interdisciplinary and Applied Sciences Committee, while Professor Gavriel Salomon (1966 Doctoral Fellow; Stanford University) was a member of the Education Committee.   In addition, the featured speaker at the awards ceremony was Fulbright alumna, Minister of Education Yuli Tamir (1994 Junior Faculty Fellow; Princeton University).

 

The Azrieli Foundation is a Canadian philanthropic organization, established by real estate entrepreneur David J. Azrieli.   The objective of the Foundation's new Fellows Program is to promote excellence and leadership in graduate studies at Israeli universities.

 

Fulbright alumnus Dr. Hossam Haick wins
Binational Science Foundation Bergmann Memorial Award

November 2007

 

Dr. Hossam Haick has been selected as one of the recipients of the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation's Bergmann Memorial Awards.

 

The Binational Science Foundation (BSF) promotes mutually beneficial scientific and technological cooperation between the USand Israel by funding research projects, based on active collaboration between American and Israeli scientists.  BSF's Bergmann Awards are special supplemental grants awarded to young scientists, recipients of new BSF research grants, whose research projects are judged to be of exceptional merit.

 

Dr. Haick and his American partner, Professor Raymond Tung of Brookly College, City University of New York, will receive BSF funding for their project on "Electron transport through conductor/molecular film/semiconductor".  The project will study metal-molecule-semiconductor junctions and contacts with emphasis on understanding the role of pinhole defects.

 

Dr. Haick, Senior Lecturer in the Technion's Department of Chemical Engineering, received a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the United States-Israel Educational Foundation in 2004 in support of research at the California Institute of Technology.

 

Hassan Al Haj wins Fulbright Science and Technolgy Award

16 October, 2007

 

Israel is once again represented in the panel of program fellows selected to receive the new Fulbright Science and Technology Award.

 

Hassan Al Haj, a research student at the Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Foundation Institute for Interdisciplinary Applications of Computer Sciences at the University of Haifa, was selected as one of the winners in the second round of the Science and Technology Award competition.  Mr. Al Haj, who plans to conduct thesis research on the topic of natural language processing, is one of forty successful candidates out of more than 100 from countries around the world who competed for this award.

 

Science and Technology Fellowships, funded by the Department of State, cover in full the cost of Fellows' first three years of study towards a doctoral degree at an American university.

 

In 2007, Ms. Limor Bursztyn, a biomedical engineering student from Tel Aviv University, received a fellowship in the first round of competition for the Fulbright Science and Technology Award.  She is now a doctoral candidate at Stanford University.

 

Fulbright alumnus Dr. Michael Graber receives
Outstanding Service Award at anniversary celebrations of the
Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer

September 16, 2007 - Montreal, Canada

 

On the 20th Aniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, celebrated in Montreal on 16 September 2007,  Fulbright alumnus Dr. Michael Graber was presented with the Montreal Protocol Outstanding Service Award. 

 

During the period 1996-2004, Dr. Graber served as the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Environmental Program's Ozone Secretariat.

 

Dr. Graber earned his PhD in Atmospheric Science from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1976, and in the same year was awarded a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship in support of research to be carried out at the Department of Environmental Protection of the State of New Jersey.  

 

Fulbright alumni named in TheMarker’s “Most Influential” issue

September 2007

 

A number of Fulbright alumni were named in The Marker’s annual “most influential issue:

 

The situation of Dr. Yoram Turbowicz (1987 Doctoral Fellow; Harvard University), the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, was discussed in a special item appended to the article on Prime Minister Olmert.

 

Dr. Basel Ghattas (2000 Humphrey Fellow; University of Maryland, College Park) was named one of seven leading figures in the NGO sector, in recognition of his role as head of The Galilee Society, one the largest and most influential Arab voluntary organizations in Israel.  Dr. Gattas was also one of the founders of Adala-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and of Itige’a, the roof organization of Arab NGO’s, where he served as Chairman and Board Member for many years.

 

Att. Idit Reiter (1999 Environment Fellow; George Washington University) was named as one of seven influential figures in the field of environment.  Reiter, a specialist in environmental law, provides legal advice to many leading industrial firms, hoping “to demonstrate to them that environmental activity not only lessens the danger that they will be the focus of legal processes, but also serves their purely business interests.”

 

Dr. Ornit Raz (2004 Post-Doctoral Fellow; MIT), the recently appointed Director General of the Israel Bio-Organic Agriculture Association, was termed “worth watching” in the section on promising young marketing excecutives.

   

Technion President's Report notes Fulbright alumni's appointments, awards

Fall 2007

 

The Technion President's Report for 2007 noted the following appointments and awards received by Fulbright Program alumni:

 

Distinguished Professsor Aaron Ciechanover of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine (1981 Post-Doctoral Fellow; MIT) was appointed a Member of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences.  Professor Ciechanover was also named a foreign associate of the American National Academy of Sciences. 

 

Dr. Hossam Haick (2004 Post-Doctoral Fellow; California Institute of Technology) was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering and was also named a Horev Fellow.

 

Dr. Avner Rothschild (2003 Post-Doctoral Fellow; MIT) was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Materials Engineering and was also named a Horev Fellow.

 

Dr. Yariv Kafri of the Faculty of Physics (2002 Post-Doctoral Fellow; Harvard) was awarded an Alon Fellowship by the Council for Higher Education and was also named a Landau Fellow.

 

For items from the period prior to September 2007, click here.

 

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