Welcome to the second issue of Fulbright Israel, the electronic newsletter for American Fulbright Israel alumni.
The Fulbright Israel program has entered a period of significant change. Two of this issue’s news items reflect this fact. One reports of the arrival in Israel of the first group of post-docs within the framework of the United States-Israel Educational Foundation’s new, expanded program for young American researchers. The second announces the launch of a new program for Israeli Master’s degree students.
Two other innovations are on the way:
First, Israel’s higher education funding authority, the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC) of the Council for Higher Education, whose generous offer of matching funds made possible our US post-doctoral researcher’s program, has given another expression of support for the Fulbright Program by deciding to co-fund USIEF’s program for Israeli post-docs. PBC financial support will make it possible to increase the number of Israeli post-doc awards, while at the same time raising their value.
Secondly, beginning in 2011/2012, Fulbright Israel will be able to add scholarships for English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) to its range of fellowships, thanks to the Department of State’s generosity in allocating the awards from its central budget. The ETAs will be assigned to teacher training colleges whose student bodies include a large proportion of students from under-served populations.
Our American alumni can contribute directly to the success of the current wave of innovation in the Fulbright Israeli program by helping us to recruit candidates for the US post-doc program. Please call the program to the attention of young researchers whose careers would benefit from two years of work under the guidance of a leading Israeli academic. The application deadline for awards commencing in 2012/2013 is August 1, 2011. The full program announcement is available on the USIEF website.
Finally, please keep us up to date regarding your achievements, so that we can report on them in future issues of Fulbright Israel.
"It's not that people are disabled. It's society that disables people," says Arlene Kanter, Professor of Law at Syracuse University, who was a 2009/2010 Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellow at Tel Aviv University. "There's really no reason why buildings should have stairs," she goes on to explain. "Society should make sure we design our environment so that it is open to all. People with disabilities should be able to participate in all aspects of life.”
"I have visited Dubai," she elaborates, "where the brand new, super-modern transportation system features flashing lights and whistles to indicate the arrival of trains to blind or hard of hearing passengers. There are ways to include everyone."
Inclusion is her life mission, the reason she became a lawyer. After volunteering in a home for people with mental disabilities in her hometown of Boston, she decided to devote herself to this cause. She advocates for the right of people with disabilities to be fully included in society, has helped write disability laws in the US, participated in drafting the 2006 UN Treaty on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and has worked to promote disability rights among Israelis and Palestinians and in other countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Ghana, Mexico, and Vietnam. "How do you define who's normal?" she answers a question with a question. "I would argue that there is no such thing as ‘normal’. We all have our abilities and limitations, and many of us are going to become 'impaired' when we grow older. Nearly everyone suffers some form of impairment or disability at some point in their lives."
Around the globe, about 655 million people are disabled. In Israel, says Kanter, disability figures are slightly higher than the 10% worldwide average. There have been improvements in the situation of the disabled during the past decade, with the passage of laws, the growth of self-advocacy groups, and improved accessibility in new buildings. About a decade ago, one Israeli child, then 13 years old, took legal action to realize his right to go to his neighborhood school, demanding that it be adapted to accommodate his wheel chair. He won the case. Last year, he was the President of the Student Union at Tel Aviv University.
Nonetheless, Kanter sees no true acceptance of disabled people in Israel. "There's still a lot of shame, embarrassment, and segregation of children and adults with disabilities in Israeli society," she says with disappointment in her voice. "Far too many people still live in institutions," she says. "People with disabilities - even people with serious physical and mental impairments - should be supported to live in the community."
Kanter founded the first joint degree program in law and disability studies, and co-directs the university-wide, multi-disciplinary Center on Human Policy, Law and Disability Studies at Syracuse University, which is home to one of the first Disability Studies programs in the world. "We do advocacy and research and teach our students from a Disability Studies perspective," she says. Disability Studies adopts a social model that places the responsibility to accommodate disabled people on society, rather than vice versa. Self-advocacy is key. "For example, at SU, we received a $1 million grant for a parent advocacy program that involves faculty and students from the Colleges of Law and Education to teach parents how to become better advocates for their children with disabilities in school. Programs like this, that link services with advocacy, are essential for social change.”
Examining the able-bodied society
In 1993 Kanter joined her husband, Steven Kepnes, a chaired Professor of Jewish Studies at Colgate University, on a one-year sabbatical in Israel that turned into two. In 1994/1995, she taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The family of four, including two young children – Rachel (now 24), and Ari (now 21) – loved living in Israel. Rachel has since graduated Brown University and is currently working at American Jewish World Service in New York, after working in the villages of Nepal with the Israeli group Teva Vetsedek (Nature and Justice); and Ari, a student at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, is now spending his junior year at the International School at Haifa University.
It was in 1993 that Kanter met Professor Neta Ziv and helped her establish The Israel Human Rights Center for People with Disabilities, Bizchut. "She was an incredible asset then, and she's a phenomenal resource now, when we're trying to establish a new program at the University," says Ziv, currently the director of The Cegla Clinical Law Programs at Tel Aviv University’s law school, and, herself an alumna of the Fulbright Program (1996 Doctoral Fellowship to Stanford University). "She's a leading expert in international human rights law,” she says of Kanter. “She's willing to work in the field, and she is totally dedicated."
Dr. Nissim Mizrachi, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University and also a Fulbright alumnus (1996 Doctoral Fellowship to the University of Michigan), co-hosted Kanter in cooperation with Ziv, and speaks of her in similar terms. "She brings a huge body of knowledge and experience about Disability Studies into the void we have here in Israel in this field. She guides us on all levels – developing theoretical thinking, creating public discussion, and writing legislation – as we draw on the disabled themselves as the source of information about their needs.” He puts their work into a more general social context, noting that “at the same time we try to learn more about the entire social model by examining the assertions of the able-bodied society".
Kanter was thrilled to be working with her colleagues at Tel Aviv University and at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Professor Ziv and Dr. Mizrachi assembled a group of scholars from all over Israel, most of them with disabilities, to discuss and define the new field of Disability Studies. Kanter helped to coordinate the group and compiled for it a collection of key articles and book chapters on Disability Studies, which will be translated into Hebrew. "This is one way in which we are growing the field of Disability Studies in Israel,” Kanter says. In December 2010, the group hosted Israel’s first international academic conference on Disability Studies at Tel Aviv University.
What drew you back to Israel?
"Three years ago I finished treatment for cancer and decided that it was time for another year in Israel. I applied to the Fulbright Program and was accepted. I was ecstatic. I couldn't have come here without the grant." As in 1993, when the family came for one year and stayed for two, Kanter and her husband decided to stay another year following her Fulbright fellowship as well. Kanter is now teaching a course she developed, International and Comparative Disability Law, at the law faculties of both Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is also working with Bizchut, Shatil, and the JDC’s Israel Unlimited Project on Disability. “All the work I’m doing this year is a result of the contacts I made and the research I conducted during my 2009/2010 Fulbright year,” she states.
Why are you so dedicated to the disabled?
"This is what I've always wanted to do with my law degree. For me, advocating for disability rights is a way to change the world. It's a human rights movement about changing society to remove physical, legal, and attitudinal barriers so that people can see the qualities and abilities of all people, including those with impairments. Last year I went to a disability rights conference in Dubai, with people from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Egypt, Lebanon, and Dubai; we all speak the same language. Wherever I travel, people working for disability rights share the same commitment, values, and vision. The goal of including people with disabilities in society bridges cultural, national, political, and religious differences.”
Was there a disabled person in your life who made you turn to this field?
"There have always been people with disabilities in my life, but I also have always been outraged when people with disabilities whom I do not know are mistreated or excluded. I've had blind and deaf law students, and students with mental illnesses in my law classes. I have learned that instead of focusing on what they can't do, I focus on their abilities and potential. One of my students at Syracuse was an autistic man who could not talk. He often walked around the room during class mumbling but would then sit down and type up a thoughtful response to a question I posed. Why shouldn't he have the right to be in my class?“
What is your most immediate goal?
"People with disabilities are learning how to advocate for themselves. That is the key to change. I would be happiest if one day there would be no need for disability rights lawyers like me."
Professor Manuel Trajtenberg took up his post as Chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of Israel’s statutory Council for Higher Education on September 1, 2009, and has been working nonstop ever since. The appointment made him one of the most important higher education policy-making figures in the country. “I was appointed for a four year term. I haven’t told anyone yet, but I gave myself three years to completely turn the system around,” reveals a man whose record, as a member of some of the most influential research institutions in the US and Europe, as advisor to the World Bank and to the Prime Minister of Israel, and as a visiting professor at leading universities around the world, indicates that he means every word he’s saying.
Trajtenberg, born in 1950, immigrated to Israel from Argentina, and his track record on the way to the top of the higher education management pyramid is lined with notable successes. He did his first and second degrees in economics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and in 1983 received his doctorate from Harvard. In 1985 he won a Fulbright fellowship, which enabled him to conduct post-doctoral research at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Boston. He explains that as a young researcher, the Fulbright grant was very significant for him. “In academia, it’s important to be exposed to a variety of research environments and researchers, and that there be a lot of interaction among researchers,” he says. “Two way traffic from here to the US and from the US to here is critical. Fulbright fills an enormously important role in this.”
Trajtenberg now fills an important executive position, which despite the fact that it deals with budgeting, has never before been held by an economist. “I think that a variety of backgrounds is necessary among those who head the institutions of higher education,” he says. “Each one brings his perspective from his discipline, and all aspire to contribute to the welfare of the system. I wasn’t brought to this position because I’m an economist, but because I established the National Economic Council, and was a member of the Shochat Committee which examined the state of higher education in Israel. But in economics we work a lot with incentives, and understand the topic in depth. I aspire to develop a new budgeting model which will allow us to incentivize research excellence, on the one hand, and teaching quality, on the other. It’s certainly no disadvantage that I come from the field of economics.”
The Nobel Prize for chemistry, recently awarded to professor Ada Yonat of the Weizmann Institute, is no disadvantage either when one is trying to revamp Israeli academia. “In the international arena, the Nobel Prize certainly places Israel in a high position,” he says. “In the last decade, scientists from the US have received 53 Nobel prizes, from Britain – 9, from Japan – 6, from Germany – 6, and from Israel – 5. That is a very respectable place to be. The Nobel Prize also indicates to external sources of funding, such as the European Union, that this is a country with very high capabilities. Internally, as well, a prize like this raises the standing of higher education. If you see that your neighbor received a Nobel Prize – maybe you can, too. Yonat is the fourth woman ever to receive the Nobel Prize for chemistry, so she certainly serves as a role model. I may be prejudiced because I have three daughters, but in Israel there are slightly more female doctoral students than male, and the prize is definitely an incentive.”
And what’s the flip side of this coin?
“We mustn’t forget that the prizes of the last decade are the outcome of the educational system that existed 20-30 years ago. So whereas this reminds us what the system is capable of, it’s doubtful if Israeli academia, as it is today, will produce Nobel Prizes 20 years from now.”
And yet Trajtenberg believes in his ability to bring significant change. “I wouldn’t have accepted this position, if I wasn’t convinced that it’s possible,” he says and quotes Barack Obama’s slogan, “Yes, we can.” And surprisingly, he isn’t in a hurry to stipulate that only a massive investment of funds will save the day. “Yes, we are desperate for resources, but we must not focus on them alone. I believe that one must clean house first, and that this is what gives the moral right to ask for additional budgets.”
Transparency first
At the heart of his clean-up and internal management improvement plan lies the first step he took when he entered his position: signing an agreement with the finance minister to reveal the salaries of all the employees of institutions of higher education. The agreement aroused turmoil and indignation, but “the fact is it’s happening,” Trajtenberg reports. “Institutions are providing the data, and they, too, will discover the advantages. We live in an age in which transparency is the name of the game in management.”
Having been a student, a researcher and a visiting scholar in many academic institutions abroad, particularly Harvard and Stanford, Trajtenberg has no illusions regarding the gaps in budgeting possibilities. “Our resources have been diluted, partly because the system has expanded greatly in terms of the number of colleges, increased accessibility, and tripling of the number of students in 20 years,” he recalls. “That is all very well, and it had to happen, but now we must once again put emphasis on the qualitative aspect. Research is very expensive, and it only becomes more expensive with time. We have to watch the balance between allocations to research and those to teaching.”
At the same time, he is anything but apologetic when it comes to Israel’s human infrastructure. “There is a huge scientific potential in the state of Israel,” he states. “I know the students well; my students have gone to study in the best universities in the US; and as someone who has taught there, too, and knows the field, I tell you most clearly that we have a young generation with superb research abilities in a wide range of disciplines. You can’t create raw talent from scratch. We have a huge potential. Something good will happen. The question is, of course, whether or not we can bring this potential to fruition, can equip it with the means to enable science in this country to flourish in a way that reflects the potential.”
Is potential all we have to offer?
“No. We also have a tradition of research excellence. That is something that’s very difficult to cultivate. It takes decades to institutionalize a tradition like this in academia. This is the main asset. And money can’t buy it. It’s about standards, criteria for promotion, ways to create internal incentives – a whole host of elements. Now we just need the system to know how to fill in the gaps, and generate the alchemy which turns raw talent and a tradition of research excellence into scientific achievement.”
What prevents this from happening?
“Conflicts, internal struggles, exhaustion of good energies in order to 'put out fires' - nothing more than that. I would really love for us to rise above these battles, to look forward to the long run, to think about great changes, to agree about goals, and to join forces in a spirit of partnership and shared mission. And I must say I am meeting more and more people who are willing to do this.”
“In three years, there will be an entirely different higher education system here,” he promises. “You can’t solve everything, but you can establish the foundations of the system in this period of time, and that is what I intend to do.”
Among the principles of Trajtenberg’s plan for change:
Establishing centers of excellence – schools of advanced studies, working in English, which will attract lecturers and young researchers from abroad
“Bringing the ivory tower down to the people” through university lecturers who will volunteer to teach in high schools
Budgeting research according to publication indicators, as customary in other countries
Adding general studies to the Bachelor’s degree program and extending its duration; and possibly cancelling the Master’s degree.
Trajtenberg’s eldest daughter recently began her studies in mathematics and physics at Tel Aviv University. “She also has academic aspirations,” says the proud father, and adds sadly that his new job doesn’t allow him to spend much time with his family. “My wife and my daughters aren’t pleased that I’m not available, but they very much appreciate the sense of mission that accompanies my work,” he says. “They are very supportive.”
Where will you go next?
“I was educated in a pioneering Zionist youth movement in Argentina. Since the age of 15 the dilemma has been whether to apply myself more to science and writing, which I love, or to hands-on work with a mission. Every few years I relive this dilemma all over again. I’m sure it will come up again in three years. I have no idea what the answer will be.”
There is something refreshing about a young scientist who, despite her father’s Jewish origin and never having visited Israel before, is thrilled to be at the Weizmann Institute of Science for completely cosmopolitan reasons: for its scientific excellence, for her research mentor’s knowledge and prestige, and for the wonderful colleagues with whom she gets to work and play. Israel is a nice backdrop to the general excitement, certainly a significant contribution to it, but it is experienced as a normal industrialized country, not a mythical entity, whether glorious or demonized.
Leah Casabianca (29) came to Israel this summer with a Fulbright post-doctoral fellowship and with additional NSF (National Science Foundation) support. “I am here for the science!” she declares with a shy smile. “Living in Israel is an added benefit.”
Her science is physical chemistry, the researcher heading the lab in which she works is world-renowned, and one would be hard pressed to find signage in Hebrew of any sort, anywhere in the building. “People come to the Weizmann Institute from all over the world. In our lab, we have four Americans, one Romanian, one Indian, two Germans, and six Israelis. My roommates are from Kenya and China,” she says, explaining that living on campus and all being new to Israel makes for a great tour group on weekends and holidays.
The title of her research, which might jeopardize the effort to continue reading this article, is “Hyperpolarized Solid State NMR Spectra of Materials and Catalysis Using Dynamic Nuclear Polarization”. The goal of her work is to develop new NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) techniques, which will be more sensitive than the existing spectroscopy methods, in the sense that they will be able to determine the structure and dynamics of chemical materials more quickly and with smaller samples than conventional spectroscopy. The technique she is applying is called DNP (Dynamic Nuclear Polarization). It involves extremely low temperatures, created by liquid helium in vacuum conditions. Under the guidance of Prof. Lucio Frydman of the chemical physics department, Casabianca is trying to develop a simpler method to do polarization, in order to enable a quick and simple analysis of small amounts of new materials synthesized at the lab. She is also working on applying DNP to metal-containing catalysts and novel carbon materials.
How did you choose this field?
“I went to a scientific high-school,” she says. “All my chemistry teachers were good. In my last year I studied organic chemistry, and that really got me interested in the field. I had a scientific research project during the last year at school, I realized I was deriving real pleasure from the challenge and the resolution of problems, and understood that I like this kind of work.”
After receiving her B.Sc. in Chemistry from Rice University in Texas, Casabianca took a year off from the fumes of the organic synthesis lab, and went to Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, to teach chemistry and physics to 7th and 8th graders in Cameroon. Upon her return, she searched for PhD programs and found NMR research at Georgetown University on malaria and HIV to be a natural progression from her work in Africa. Having received her doctorate from Georgetown, she completed her first post-doc at the University of Illinois in Chicago, specializing in solid state NMR.
Casabianca had met Professor Frydman during the first year of her doctoral studies and was completely taken by him, she reports. “But Israel seemed very far at the time. Then, while I was doing my first post-doc, I encountered an ad for Fulbright Israel. I remembered meeting Lucio and was dying to come to his lab, but since he is one of the worldwide stars in the field, I didn’t think he would even talk to me, nor did I believe I would get the scholarship.”
As it turns out, Professor Frydman does talk to her, occasionally invites her and the other researchers at the lab for dinner at his house, and leads them on long bicycle trips. “We all bought bicycles, and we enjoy breaking out of our little bubble at the Institute,” she says.
What did your family think of where you were going?
“My dad is Jewish, so he was thrilled that I got a post-doc in Israel. My mom isn’t, and she had a harder time with it. But eventually she got used to the idea, and they are both planning to visit Israel while I am here. Personally, when I heard I got the scholarship, I went through the complete range of emotions, from being a bit terrified to completely excited.”
What is unique about this lab?
“Both the science, and the warm welcome. Weizmann is a world class research institute. Personally, I’ve never worked at a larger and better-funded lab before, and I feel like I’m at the center of the action. There are amazing researchers here, all down the same corridor. All the post-docs are full of energy, and dying to learn. Everyone has a different background, and therefore a different area of expertise. We are not afraid to ask questions, and I’m learning new skills from my colleagues all the time. Professor Frydman and his family, as well as the other professors on the floor, and the Israeli students here, have been so welcoming, and they really care about making sure the foreign students and post-docs feel at home. I feel like we’re a big family.”
“We recently started a joint, weekly study group for the three related labs. We meet every Tuesday to discuss articles that explain the physics behind our work. During this meeting, there is no such thing as a stupid question; we want people to ask freely. We progress very slowly, to make sure everything is understood. No one is forcing us to do this, but it’s fun!“
She presents an article plastered with lengthy formulas in Greek letters, which she’s reading for the upcoming meeting of the study group. “It’s rare that students or post-docs will initiate a meeting like this by themselves. It’s nice to be in a place where I am not the only nerd who wants to learn more,” she notes.
Casabianca is here for two years, and expects to expand her circle of Israeli friends during this time. She says a year of planning, including reading about Israel and trying to learn a little Hebrew, have helped to prepare her quite well. “When I walked out of the Institute for the first time, to take a walk on Herzl Street, I didn’t feel like a stranger,” she says. “I felt a sense of belonging.”
What is your dream?
“To do a post-doc at the Weizmann Institute,” she laughs. “My professional goal is to get an academic teaching and research position at a university in the US.”
The first 8 young American researchers, selected as Fellows of USIEF’s new program for US post-docs, have begun working at Israeli universities. Each researcher will be in Israel for the equivalent of two academic years (20 months). In order to facilitate their stay in Israel the Fellows receive a stipend of $20,000 per year, in addition to a stipend provided by their host institutions.
The new Fellows will be conducting research in chemistry (3), medical physics, physics and astronomy, public health, business administration, and science education. They received their doctorates from the University of Michigan (2), the University of California at Davis, the University of California at Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the University of Washington. Their host institutions are the Weizmann Institute (5), the University of Haifa, the Technion, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
USIEF’s expanded program of fellowships for American post-doctoral researchers has been made possible by the generous provision of matching funds by the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, Israel’s higher education funding authority.
Photo: US Post-Doctoral Fellow Eric Amster integrates research with domestic duties.
Dena Davis named Distinguished Professor
Fulbright alumna Professor Dena S. Davis, a 2001 Senior Scholar Fellow at Bar Ilan University, has been named the James A. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Law of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University.
Professor Davis, who earned her PhD in Religion from the University of Iowa and her law degree from the University of Virginia, has taught at Cleveland-Marshall since 1990. Since 2003 she has served as Adjunct Professor in the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Ethics.
Professor Davis’ teaching, research and scholarship focus on issues of biomedical ethics, genetics and law. Her many publications include the books Genetic Dilemmas: Reproductive Technology, Parental Choices and Children’s Futures (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Notes from a Narrow Bridge (University Publishing Group, 1999; co-authored with Laurie Zoloth). A third book, The Stories Genes Tell, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Professor Davis has been a member of many working groups in her fields of expertise. Most recently, she was one of nine academics appointed to the National Institutes of Health’s Working Group for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Eligibility Review, which will determine which human embryonic stem cell lines can be used in NIH-supported research.
Nina Menkes wins award at Jerusalem Film Festival
Fulbright alumna Nina Menkes’ first Hebrew language film, Dissolution, won the Anat Pirchi Award for Best Drama at the 2010 International Film Festival in Jerusalem. Menkes was Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellow at Tel Aviv University during the 2008/2009 academic year.
Dissolution was awarded the NIS 50,000 prize for what the international jury called “bold cinematic language, profound content, beautiful cinematography, original use of sound and exceptional acting”. Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Dissolution combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal B&W realism to explore the condition of violence which permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Jaffa, the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by a non-actor.
Nina Menkes teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. During her visit in Israel as a Fulbright Fellow, the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa cinematheques honored her with a retrospective screening of all her feature films.
Symposium in memory of Professor Steve Goldstein
On December 15, 2010, the Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law, with the support of the United States-Israel Educational Foundation, held a symposium in memory of Professor Steve Goldstein at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Professor Steve Goldstein served as the Director of the Sacher Institute from 1984 until 1987 and was Dean of the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University in the period 1987-1990. From 1988 until 1999, he served the Fulbright Israel Program as Chairman of the Board of the United States-Israel Educational Foundation.
“Steve Goldstein was an inspiration to me, both as a researcher and as a human being. As a researcher, because he laid the foundations in various aspects of law with which few had dealt with before, particularly in the areas of international civil litigation and class action law. As a human being, because he was full of the joy of life, modest and caring,” said Professor Michael Karayanni, the current head of the Sacher Institute and a 2002 Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow to the University of Pennsylvania.
Symposium speakers discussed current trends in class action lawsuits in civil litigation; international jurisdiction in the age of globalization; the law regarding court costs and legal fees; and a number of additional topics. Among the lecturers were Professor Ed Rock of the University of Pennsylvania, a 1995 Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellow to The Hebrew University, and Dr. Issachar Rosen-Zvi of Tel Aviv University, a 1998 Fulbright Doctoral Fellow to Stanford University.
Book by alumni wins Washington Institute Gold Prize
From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust, authored by Fulbright alumni Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, has been awarded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s prestigious Gold Book Prize for 2010. The book, based on extensive study of primary sources in Arabic, analyzes the manner in which Arab attitudes toward the Holocaust influenced and were shaped by broader anti-Zionist sentiment.
The prize jury wrote that “Through painstaking sifting of Arabic sources, the authors carefully measure the psychological barriers that block Arab comprehension of the Holocaust’s significance for Israel, Jewry, and the world. In so doing, Meir Litvak and Esther Webman tell a neglected story behind the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
Dr. Esther Webman received a Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in 2004 in support of research conducted at Boston University. She is a research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and also the head of the Desk for the Study of Tolerance and Intolerance in the Near East in the University’s Institute for the study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism.
Professor Meir Litvak, who in 1984 received a Fulbright grant for doctoral studies at Harvard, is a member of the staff of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, Director of the University’s Center for Iranian Studies, and a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center.
First Outreach alumni return to Israel with US degrees
A number of Fulbright alumni from the first cycles of the Outreach initiative have already returned to Israel with their US degrees in hand. Attorney Ola Shtiwi earned her Master’s degree in law at Notre Dame University, while Attorney Alaa Mahajna completed his LLM studies at the University of Virginia. Fadi Kanaan received his Master’s degree in Educational Psychology & Methodology from SUNY at Albany.
The Fulbright Outreach Program, initiated in 2007, provides full scholarships to Arab and Ethiopian students for up to two years of post-graduate study in the United States. In 2010, 10 Outreach candidates were awarded scholarships, 5 for Master’s degree studies and 5 for doctoral programs.
Photos: Fulbright Outreach alumnus Fadi Kanaan receives his diploma.
USIEF launches new Israeli Master’s degree scholarship
USIEF has launched a new fellowship program for Israeli Master’s degree students. Full scholarships, which cover tuition, living expenses, air fare, and other study-associated expenses, are offered to candidates in any field, except business administration and clinical disciplines.
In the new program, the files of candidates chosen by USIEF’s selection committee are referred to the Institute for International Education, which manages Fulbright student programs for the Department of State. The Institute’s expert advisers prepare for each candidate a list of American universities to which admissions applications are submitted.
The first group of candidates for Master’s degree fellowships was recruited in 2010, and the responses to their admissions requests will be received in spring 2011. The deadline for submission of applications for the second program cycle is March 31, 2011. The full program announcement is available on the USIEF website.
USIEF marks International Education Week
Each year, USIEF takes part in the Department of State’s International Education Week, whose objective is to promote programs which prepare Americans who are going to study abroad and which attract future leaders from abroad to study in the United States and experience it.
In 2010 USIEF held two educational counseling events to mark International Education Week.
On November 18, over fifty potential students attended a panel presentation, held in the USIEF office, on American LLM and SJD programs. The panel included Israeli alumni of Harvard University, New York University, and the University of Virginia. In addition, a representative of Pepperdine University joined the discussion via video-conference from California.
On December 1, 80 high school students took part in an information session on undergraduate study in the United States, which was held at the Tabeetha School in Jaffa. The event was organized by USIEF’s EducationUSA counseling service in cooperation with the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy. The gathering was addressed by Ms. Arona Maskil, Director of EducationUSA, and by representatives of the Embassy.
Photos: Pupils listening to Arona Maskil, Director of EducationUSA, at the IEW event, held at the Tabeetha School in Jaffa.
