Michael B. Oren, Ph.D. – Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem

Peter J. Haas, Ph.D. – Abba Hillel Professor of Jewish Studies, Director of the Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies, and Chair of the Department of Religion at Case Western Reserve University

Friday February 27, 2009
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Crawford Hall – Room 9
Inamori Center
Case Western Reserve University

Dear Colleagues,

With Benjamin Netanyahu expected to become Prime Minister of Israel, it’s hard to avoid a sense of what Yogi Berra supposedly called “déjà vu all over again.”

Netanyahu’s record as Prime Minister is part of why European Union officials are raising concern that his appointment could make a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict less likely. But Israeli politics is a matter of coalitions, changing conditions, and extreme cross-pressures. The coalitions and players now are not quite the same as in the 1990s, and we do not even know (as of February 23) what deals would have to be cut to put a governing coalition together.

So what might happen, and why? What kinds of coalitions would pursue what kinds of policies? How much freedom to act could any new government have? The Center for Policy Studies thanks Cleveland Hillel for its willingness to share Dr. Oren, who will be speaking at greater length at Hillel on Thursday evening at 7:30. Dr. Oren is the author of the highly acclaimed Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, and Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present. Joining him for our conversation is our own Professor Haas, who brings deep knowledge of Israeli politics to the table. We could not have a better pair with whom to discuss the current headlines and perhaps headlines to come.

As usual, we will gather in Room 9 of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, on the lower level of Crawford Hall, for free cookies, beverages, and brown bag lunch.

Best regards,
Joe White

About Our Guest

Michael B. Oren is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research facility, where he specializes in the diplomatic and military history of the Middle East. He has written extensively for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, of which he is a contributing editor, and has been interviewed on CNN, Fox, The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show, and Today. He is the CBS Middle East expert.

A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Dr. Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. He was a Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University and a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University. In 2006, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale, returning to Yale in 2007. He has testified before Congress on Middle Eastern affairs and briefed the White House.

Dr. Oren is the author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, published in 2002 by Oxford University Press. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and won the Los Angeles Times’ History Book of the Year prize and the National Jewish Book Award. His most recent book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, was eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won a Council for the Humanities Book Award.

Peter J. Haas received his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Brown University in 1980. Prior to enrolling at Brown, he attended Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati where he was ordained as a Reform rabbi in 1974. After ordination, he served on active duty as a U.S. Army chaplain for three years. He received his B.A. degree in Ancient Near East History in 1970 from the University of Michigan.

Professor Haas joined the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University in January, 2000. He served on the faculty in Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University from 1980 to 1999. He has taught courses in Judaism, Jewish ethics, the Holocaust, and Western religion. He has published several books and articles dealing with moral discourse and has lectured in the United States, Germany and Israel. His most recent work is on the relationship between science and moral discourse.

Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

March 6: “Pirates!,” Milena Sterio, Assistant Professor at Cleveland Marshall College of Law, and Gillian Weiss, Assistant Professor of History.

March 20: “How International Terrorism is Financed and What Can Be Done About It,” Richard Gordon, Associate Professor of Law.

March 27: Promise and Problems of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Bill Leatherberry, Professor of Law , CWRU.

April 3: TBA

April 10: Exonerating the Innocent: The Impact of DNA Evidence. Paul Gianelli, Weatherhead Professor of Law, CWRU.

April 17: CWRU Students Report on the Election in El Salvador.

April 24: TBA.

The Friday Lunch discussions are held on the lower (ground) level of Crawford Hall.  Visitors with mobility issues may find it easiest to take advantage of special arrangements we have made. On most Fridays, a few parking spaces in the V.I.P. lot in between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone Chapel are held for participants in the lunch discussion.

Visitors then can avoid walking up the hill to the first floor of Crawford by entering the building on the ground level, through the garage area under the building.  The further door on the left in that garage will be left unlocked during the period before the Friday lunch.  On occasion, parking will be unavailable because of other university events.

For more information about these and other Center for Policy Studies programs, please see http://policy.case.edu.