Speaker: Daphne Richemond-Barak, assistant professor; Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, Reichman University, Israel

From the first World War to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza, underground warfare has always represented one of the deadliest and most complicated combat environments. Israel went into the current war possessing the most advanced military capabilities in detection, mapping, and destruction of tunnels, yet this neither deterred Hamas from digging or lessened the challenge of subterranean fighting.

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Daphne Richemond-Barak is an assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, and serves as the Academic Head of the International Program in Government (RRIS) and as Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). She is also an adjunct scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, also at West Point. In 2019, her book 'Underground Warfare' was awarded the Prize Chaikin by the Chair in Geostrategy at the University of Haifa for its contribution to the geostrategy of Israel and the Middle East.

Dr. Richemond-Barak holds a Maitrise from Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), a Diploma in Legal Studies from Oxford University (Hertford College), an LL.M. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University. She was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, and was a recipient of the European Commission Scholarship, the Hertford College Prize, and the Oxford Prize for Distinction. Prior to joining the IDC, Dr. Richemond-Barak served as a clerk at the International Court of Justice, and worked as an attorney in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb.
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speaker: Tamar Hermann, academic director, The Viterbi Family Center, The Israel Democracy Institute, Israel

What do public opinion surveys reveal to us about political preferences in Israel? Has the Gaza War led to shifts in those preferences, and if so, how? And who is likely to win the next national elections in Israel? In this webinar, one of Israel’s most prominent public opinion experts, Tamar Hermann, presents and analyzes the latest data.

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Professor Tamar Hermann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and the Academic Director of the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research. The Center documents the attitudes of the Israeli public across a broad range of issues: politics, culture, ideology, religion, education and national security. Since 2010, Prof. Hermann has headed the team which develops and produces the annual Israeli Democracy Index, and since 2018 – the monthly Israeli Voice Index. Prof. Herman is a Professor of Political Science at the Open University in Israel.
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S. and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speaker: Yaniv Roznai, associate professor and vice-dean, Harry Radzyner Law School; co-director, Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges, Reichman University, Israel 

What can courts do when confronted with executives and legislators prepared to violate basic constitutional norms or seek to undermine democracy through constitutional amendments? Are there situations in which courts need to step in to prevent “abusive constitutionalism”? In this webinar Larry Diamond and Amichai Magen talk with Yaniv Roznai about Israel’s Supreme Court’s dramatic recent decisions.

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Yaniv Roznai is an Associate Professor and Vice-Dean at the Harry Radzyner Law School, and C0-director at the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges, Reichman University. He holds a PhD and LL.M (Distinction) from The London School of Economics (LSE), and LLB and BA degrees (magna cum laude) in Law and Government from the IDC, Herzliya (now Reichman University). Roznai's scholarship focuses on comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, legisprudence, and public international law. He is the author of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments – The Limit of Amendment Powers (Oxford University Press, 2017).
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S. and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speaker: Danielle Gilbert, assistant professor of political science, Northwestern University

Israel has a long and troubled history responding to hostage crises, but the nature and scale of Hamas’s hostage taking on October 7th is unprecedented. In this webinar, Danielle Gilbert will discuss the long history of hostage taking in war, the evolution of hostage diplomacy, and what lessons can be drawn from the current hostage crisis in Gaza.

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Danielle Gilbert’s research explores the causes and consequences of hostage taking, including projects on rebel kidnapping, hostage recovery policy, and hostage diplomacy. Following Hamas’s October 7th attack, she published the essay: “Why the Gaza Hostage Crisis Is Different.” In 2023, she was selected to serve on the Bipartisan Commission on Hostage Taking and Wrongful Detention at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) In Washington, DC. Before embarking on an academic career, she served four years on Capitol Hill including as a Senior Legislative Assistant and Appropriations Associate, and she worked as a policy advisor on presidential and congressional campaigns.
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S. and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speaker: Mohammed Darawshe, director of strategy at the Shared Society Center, Givat Haviva Educational Center, Galilee, Israel

When Hamas perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history on October 7th 2023, it targeted not only Jews, but also Israeli Arabs. Among those killed by Hamas on October 7th was Awad Darawsheh, a 23 year-old paramedic, who was working at the Nova Music Festival, when the terrorists struck. In this webinar, Larry Diamond and Amichai Magen talk with Awad’s first cousin, Mohammed Darawshe, about the impact of October 7th and the subsequent war on Israeli Arabs and the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

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Mohammed Darawshe is the Director of Strategy at the Shared Society Center of the Givat Haviva Educational Center in the Galilee, and a faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is widely consulted as a leading expert on Jewish-Arab relations. He previously served as Co-Director of The Abraham Fund Initiatives and as Elections Campaign Manager for the Democratic Arab Party and later The United Arab List. He was the recipient of the Peacemakers Award from the Catholic Theological Union, and the Peace and Security Award of the World Association of NGO’s, and was Leadership Fellow at the New Israel Fund. In 2008, Mohammed Darawshe was elected as a city council member in his hometown Iksal. In 2009 he served as a member of The National Committee which drafted Israel’s Coexistence Education policy.
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S. and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speaker: Haviv Rettig Gur, senior analyst for The Times of Israel 

2023 will be remembered as Israel’s year of horrors. It began with deep societal polarization, mass protests, and anxiety about the future of Israeli democracy, following the new Netanyahu government’s plan to weaken judicial independence. It ended with the most devastating terrorist attack in Israel’s history and a war that is now being fought on multiple fronts. In this webinar, Amichai Magen, FSI's visiting fellow in Israel Studies, will be joined by one of Israel’s leading analysts, Haviv Rettig Gur, to take stock of 2023 and seek to ascertain what awaits Israel in 2024.

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A veteran Israeli-American journalist and analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur serves as The Times of Israel’s Senior Analyst. He has reported from over 20 countries and served as director of communications for the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel’s largest NGO. Haviv lectures on Israeli politics, the U.S.-Israel relationship, the peace process, modern Jewish history and identity, and Israel-diaspora relations.
 

During the 2024 winter quarter (January-March) FSI's Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program is hosting a series of webinars exploring various aspects of contemporary Israeli politics, societal and security challenges. Webinars will take place on Wednesdays, 10:00-11:15am PST (20:00-21:15pm, Israel Time). Each webinar will feature a guest speaker from Israel or the U.S. and will include a lecture or moderated conversation with the guest, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

About the Event: During the Second World War, U.S. and British military figures feared that Nazi Germany was pursuing a program to produce weapons that dispersed radiological material without a nuclear detonation. Although mistaken in their assessment, both countries in the postwar period launched their own radiological weapons (RW) programs, as did the Soviet Union. Death Dust explores the largely unknown history of the rise and demise of RW—sometimes portrayed as a “poor man’s nuclear weapon”—through a series of comparative case studies across the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Iraq.  The authors draw on newly available archival material and interview data to illuminate the drivers of and impediments to radiological weapons innovation.  They also examine how new, dire circumstances, such as the war in Ukraine, might encourage other states to pursue RW and analyze the impact of the spread of such weapons on nuclear deterrence and the nonproliferation regime. They conclude by offering practical steps to reduce the likelihood of a resurgence of interest in and pursuit of radiological weapons by state actors.

About the Speakers: 

Sarah Bidgood is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program. Prior to this, she served as Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. Her work focuses on U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian arms control, risk reduction, and nonproliferation cooperation, as well as the nonproliferation regime more broadly. Her research and analysis have been published in journals such as International Security, the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, and The Nonproliferation Review, as well as outlets including Foreign Policy, Arms Control Today, War on the Rocks, and The National Interest. Sarah is a coauthor of the forthcoming book, Death Dust: The Rise, Decline, and Future of Radiological Weapons Programs, which will be published by Stanford University Press in December 2023. She is also the coeditor of Once and Future Partners: The United States, Russia, and Nuclear Non-proliferation (London, UK: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2018). Sarah received her BA in Russian from Wellesley College. She holds an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an MA with distinction in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She is a PhD candidate in Defense Studies at King’s College London, where her dissertation focuses on the relationship between Cold War nuclear crises and arms control.

Hanna Notte is the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and a senior associate (non-resident) with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Notte holds a doctorate and MPhil in international relations from Oxford University. Her expertise is on Russian foreign policy, the Middle East, and arms control and nonproliferation. Her writings have appeared in the Nonproliferation Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and War on the Rocks, among others.

William Potter is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at MIIS.  He is the author, co-author, or editor of over 20 books. Dr. Potter has served on committees of the US National Academy of Sciences and is a past member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. He has participated as a delegate at every NPT Review Conference and Preparatory Committee meeting since 1995. He is the recipient of the 2021 Therese Delpech Memorial Award.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: The global energy transition will trigger more competition among great powers—the United States, China, and Russia. Global efforts to transition to low-carbon fuels to meet climate goals have prompted the realization that China is the Saudi Arabia of low-carbon energy manufacturing and exports. The only area of commercial low-carbon energy that China is not yet leading is nuclear reactor and fuel exports, an area in which Russia, the other U.S. adversary, continues to dominate despite its actions in Ukraine. While there has been increased global collaboration and coordination on low-carbon energy and emissions targets, major energy consumers, including the United States, are facing growing competition over resources, such as critical minerals needed for low-carbon technologies, and a race to manufacture and innovate new forms of low-carbon technologies. The United States is currently at a disadvantage, as it is dependent on imports for critical minerals, renewable technologies, and nuclear fuel. The energy transition has the potential to reorder energy suppliers and import dependencies, and countries leading the race to supply the transition will reap the economic and geopolitical benefits traditionally afforded to dominant fossil fuel suppliers. China’s new role as a dominate supplier of the energy transition bodes well for its broader foreign policy initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and Global Energy Interconnection. Hence, it’s important to examine the energy transition in the context of great power competition to better understand how the world’s changing energy landscape could potentially affect U.S. national, economic, and energy security absent prudent planning. You can find the publication here: https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR-Livermore-Paper-12-EnergyTransition-2023.0831.pdf.

About the Speaker: Asmeret Asghedom is the associate deputy director of the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Prior to joining CGSR, she worked at various positions in the U.S. federal government for over 10 years, focusing on global energy security issues. From June 2018 to January 2022, she was the director of the Energy Security Division in the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, managing the production, briefing, and coordination of energy and climate security intelligence products that were briefed to the U.S. president and cabinet officials. From January 2017 to May 2018, she was a production chief and an intelligence analyst in the Energy Security Division, writing finished intelligence products and briefing senior officials, including the secretary of energy, on global energy issues with the potential to impact U.S. national security. From June 2016 to December 2016, she was a policy advisor at the Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs, focusing on economic policy in the Middle East and North Africa. From November 2011 to May 2016, she was an economist at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, forecasting the production, demand, and price of global crude oil, tracking major supply disruptions, and analyzing geopolitical events affecting global oil and natural gas markets. She holds a BA in political science from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), a BA in journalism and media studies from UNLV, and an MA in international economic development from American University in Washington DC.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: New digital technologies are profoundly changing human thought, including in the interpretation and application of international law. In this seminar, I employ both critical and behavioural approaches to international law to reflect on the technological revolution in international law, developing a cognitive-behavioural critique of contemporary law of armed conflict. Through an interdisciplinary and empirical exploration, I demonstrate that despite their differences – methodologically, theoretically, and ideologically – both critical and cognitive-behavioural approaches to international law share a commitment to complexity: a reading of knowledge production as a situated exercise, affected by geography, positioning, and motivations.

About the Speaker: Shiri Krebs is a Professor of Law at Deakin University and Law and Policy Co-Lead at the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC). In 2023-2024 she is a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and a Senior Humboldt Fellow at Hamburg University. She is an affiliate scholar at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and serves as the elected Chair of the international Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict. Her current funded projects include an ARC DECRA Fellowship studying the regulation of predictive technologies for preventive counterterrorism, at the intersection of law, science, and technology. 

Prof Krebs’ research on international fact-finding, biases in counterterrorism decision-making, and human-machine interaction in drone warfare, has influenced decision-making processes through invitations to brief high-level decision-makers, including at the United Nations (CTED, Office of the Secretary-General), the United States Department of Defence, and the Australian Defence Force. Her recent research awards include the ‘Researcher of the Year’ Award (Australian Women in Law Awards, 2022), the David Caron Prize (American Society of International Law, 2021), the Australian Legal Research Awards (finalist, Article/Chapter (ECR), 2022), and the Vice-Chancellor’s Researcher Award for Career Excellence (Deakin, 2022). 

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: How does possession of nuclear weapons affect decisionmaker psychology? Extensive research documents the causes of proliferation, but we know far less about the psychological consequences of this proliferation. Drawing on advances in psychological research on power, this paper expects that possession of nuclear weapons increases support for preventive war. In contrast to conventional security and prestige arguments, the feeling of power activates a curious combination of fear and overconfidence -- the hallmark features of preventive war thinking. The paper examines this expectation through internal documents in the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations. The findings shed new light on the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy in general, as well as the sources of preventive war thinking in particular.

About the Speaker: Caleb Pomeroy is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He researches the psychology of power in international relations, notably the effects of relative state power on human thought and behavior. His work is published or forthcoming at International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and Security Studies, among other outlets. He holds a PhD in International Relations from The Ohio State University, an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford, an MSc in Security Studies from University College London, and a BA in Economics from Boston College.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.