Democracy in the heart of the Middle East, in the midst of a national conflict

As part of the course, Alexander Yakobson, professor at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is giving a series of public lectures in English on the complex workings of Israeli society. The next lecture, entitled Democracy in the heart of the Middle East, in the midst of a national conflict – what kind of democracy? examines the birth and development of Israeli democracy from 1948 to the present day.

Born in Moscow in 1959, Alexander Yakobson immigrated to Israel in 1973. He obtained his BA in history and political science, and his MA and PhD in ancient history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After working for 8 years as political adviser and parliamentary assistant to a minister and a member of the Knesset, he was a postdoc at the Universität zu Köln, and a lecturer at Haifa University. In 1998, he returned to the Hebrew University, where he has lectured on ancient history, since 2011 as an associate professor. Moreover, he has also been an op-ed writer for the daily newspaper Ha’aretz for more than two decades.

His main field of research has been democracy, popular politics, public opinion and elections in the Classical World, mostly in the late Roman Republic. Currently he focuses on early Imperial themes: Augustus, Tiberius, the public image of the Imperial regime, the status of the Imperial family. At the same time, he also researches contemporary democracy, national identity, nation-state and the rights of national minorities – in Israel and in Western democracies.

Beside numerous articles, he is the author of the book Elections and Electioneering in Rome: A Study in the Political System of the Late Republic (Historia Einzelschriften, Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999), co-author of Israel and the Family of Nations: Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights (Schocken, Tel Aviv 2003, in Hebrew; French version in 2006, English version in 2009), as well as of Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013).

Link to the online lecture.

Further lectures:

• October 21 – Israel's great dilemmas