In recent years, creeping demographic changes and deep political divisions have made many Israelis worry about the fragmentation of their society into several contending “tribes.” In a 2015 talk that became known as “The Four Tribes Speech,” Israel’s President, Reuven Rivlin, observed that Israel was rapidly transforming from a country defined by a unified national ethos into one where secular, nationalist-religious, ultraorthodox Jews, and Israeli Arabs increasingly possess separate identities. But some are fighting back, seeking to renegotiate the Israeli social contract and rejuvenate a cohesive center.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Yoav Heller is co-founder and chairman of “The Fourth Quarter”, an Israeli NGO and mass movement dedicated to rebuilding Israeli modern democratic centrism. A historian by training, Yoav has had a rich career in media – including Ynet, Israel's largest online media site, which he helped establish and in which he served as senior editor – education and community leadership. Yoav Heller holds a BA in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies and an MA in Management and Education from Tel Aviv University. He completed his Ph.D. in History at the University of London, Royal Holloway College Holocaust Research Institute.

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Since its modern rebirth in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust, Israel has always sought to balance nationalism with liberalism, and to reconcile Jewish particularism and the need for a strong national military with an great societal diversity and a desire to be part of the free world. What is the relationship between nationalism and liberalism? Can the two coexist over time? Did Israel ever get the balance right? Is 2024 Israel too nationalistic and not liberal enough? And can it rediscover a formula that to successfully reconcile its simultaneous need for particularism and openness?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Yuli Tamir is President of Beit Berl College. She served as Member of Knesset for the Labor Party between 2003 and 2010, and as Minister of Immigrant Absorption and Minister of Education. She received a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Oxford University, a BA in Biology and an MA in Political Science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A leading scholar of liberalism, education, nationality, feminism, and human rights, Tamir is the author of Liberal Nationalism (1993) and editor of Democratic Education in a Multicultural State (1995) and Moral and Political Education (2001).

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Ari Shavit – one of Israel’s most experienced, critical, and erudite political analysts – was one of the first people in the world to put pen to paper in the aftermath of the October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. In his latest book (published in Hebrew, with an English edition forthcoming), Shavit argues that Israel now finds itself in an existential war with Iran. It is a crisis from which, Ari Shavit argues, Israel will either emerge victorious and transformed or cease to exist.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ari Shavit is a leading Israeli columnist, author, and political analyst. Born in Rehovot, Israel, Shavit studied philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, before embarking on a distinguished career in journalism. In the early 1990s he was chairman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and in 1995 he joined Haaretz, where he served on the editorial board until 2016. His recent books include the New York Time bestseller My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (2013) and Existential War: From Catastrophe, to Victory, to Revival (2024) [Hebrew].

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“Zionism” – once an innocuous term favored by socialists and liberals alike to denote support for the right of the Jewish People to equal national self-determination in the Land of Zion – has become a deeply contested word. Postcolonial and critical theories, in particular, have radically reinterpreted the term, with some weaponizing Zionism to accuse Israel and its allies of everything from racism and genocide to police brutality in Portland, Oregon, and even climate change. So, what is “Zionism”? Where did the word and concept come from? And why has it become so heatedly contested?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading thinker on Israel, Zionism, foreign policy, and education. She was a Member of Knesset from 2010 to 2013, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Born and raised in Israel, Einat served as Foreign Policy Advisor to then Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and as a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company. Her recent books include The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (2020, co-authored with Adi Schwartz) and We Should All Be Zionists (2022) – a collection of her essays on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace.

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As Head of Israel’s National Economic Council between 2009 and 2015 Professor Eugene Kandel possessed a unique insider’s view into the fundamental structure of the Israeli economy and the most powerful trends shaping its society and politics. By 2023 Kandel was so alarmed by what he observed happening to those fundamentals that he warned of the collapse of the Israeli economy (and with it the state) if Israel did not fundamentally rethink its social contract and governance structure.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Eugene Kandel is the founder and chairman of RISE Israel Institute, the Emil Spyer Professor of Economics and Finance at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. From 2009 to 2015 he served as Head of the National Economic Council and Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel, advancing significant economic policies and reforms.

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This panel examines the impact of the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon on regime stability in the region. How have ruling establishments managed popular sentiment and protests as Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon have continued with no end in sight? How have opposition forces and protest movements responded to these developments? What challenges have they faced? What is the relationship between movements in solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon and domestic oppositional politics? The panelists will discuss the major trends and contextualize them in historical perspective.

PANELISTS:

• Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus
• Samia Errazzouki, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Humanities Center 
• Hesham Sallam, Associate Director, Program on Arab Reform and Development

This event is co-sponsored by CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Development and Democracy Day at Stanford University.

Since coming to power, Turkey’s governing party, the AKP has made poverty relief a central part of their political program. In addition to neoliberal reforms, AKP’s program has involved an emphasis on Islamic charity that is unprecedented in the history of the Turkish Republic. To understand the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, Gizem Zencirci introduces the concept of the Muslim Social, defined as a welfare regime that reimagined and reconfigured Islamic charitable practices to address the complex needs of a modern market society.

Through an in-depth ethnography of social service provision, in The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey (Syracuse University Press, 2024), Zencirci demonstrates the blending of religious values and neoliberal elements in dynamic, flexible, and unexpected ways. Although these governmental assemblages of Islamic neoliberalism produced new forms of generosity, distinctive notions of poverty, and novel ways of relating to others in society, Zencirci’s analysis reveals how this welfare regime privileged managerial efficiency and emotional well-being at the expense of other objectives such as equality, development, or justice. The book provides a lens onto the everyday life of Islamic neoliberalism, while also mapping the kind of political concerns that animate poverty governance in our capitalist present.

Book talk co-sponsored the by Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CDDRL's Program on Turkey, and the Middle Eastern Studies Forum.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Gizem Zencirci, PhD studies the cultural politics of neoliberalism in Turkey. Zencirci is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College. Her research interests include Islamic neoliberalism, civilizationism, heritage studies, and cultural economy. Her work has been published in journals such as the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the Journal of Cultural Economy.