Abstract:  

Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East is a new, ground-breaking textbook on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is the first on this hyper-sensitive subject to have been team-written by a Palestinian, an Israeli, and an Egyptian representing a broader Arab perspective: The book presents competing narratives that the different parties have developed and adopted with respect to the conflict's various milestones and provides a toolbox for analyzing past, current and future developments in the conflict and in the efforts to resolve it.

At the CDDRL seminar, two of the book's three authors, Shai Feldman and Khalil Shikaki will address the challenges associated with teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict and the manner in which they suggest overcoming these challenges. In addition, they will share what insights they gain from the historical record of the efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict when assessing the likely prospects of the most recent attempt to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, launched and orchestrated by Secretary of State John Kerry. 

Speaker bios:

Shai Feldman is the Judith and Sidney Swartz Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of Politics at Brandeis University. Prof. Feldman is also a Senior Fellow and a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where he serves as Co-Chair of the Middle East Security Project. In 1997-2005, he was Head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and in 2001-2003, he served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Prof. Feldman was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of California at Berkeley in 1980.

Prof. Feldman is the author of numerous publications. These include five books: Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A Strategy for the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); The Future of U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation (Washington D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996); Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997); Bridging the Gap: A Future Security Architecture for the Middle East (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997 – with Abdullah Toukan (Jordan); and, Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003 – with Hussein Agha, Ahmad Khalidi, and Zeev Schiff).

 

Khalil Shikaki is a professor of political science and director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. Since 2005 he has been a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He earned his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 1985, and taught at several Palestinian and American universities. Between 1996-99, Prof. Shikaki served as the dean of scientific research at al Najah University in Nablus. Since 1993 he has conducted more than 200 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and, since 2000, dozens of joint polls among Palestinians and Israelis.

He is the co-author of the annual report of the Arab Democracy Index. His recent publications include “The future of Israel-Palestine: a one-state reality in the making,” NOREF Report, May 2012; "Coping with the Arab Spring; Palestinian Domestic and Regional Ramifications," Middle East Brief, no. 58, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, December 2011; Public Opinion in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Public Imperative During the Second Intifada, with Yaacov Shamir, Indiana University Press, 2010.

Speaker Bio:

Yael Zeira is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In fall 2013, she will be Croft Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Mississippi. Her research agenda explores the sources and dynamics of political conflict and violence in the context of the Middle East, with a focus on the political behavior, attitudes and identities of ordinary individuals during times of conflict. Her book project investigates the logic of individual participation in political conflict and violence using original survey and interview research on the Palestinian national movement. Other projects include a field study examining the effect of international legal decisions on the conflict attitudes of individuals in war-torn societies, as well as a new study assessing the impact of family law on women and girls in the Islamic world. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at New York University in fall 2012.

Speaker Bio:

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010. He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.

Francis Fukuyama was born on October 27, 1952. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of a new magazine, The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), and Kansai University (Japan). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, member of the Board of Governors of the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.