Shlomo Avineri, Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gave the 7th Annual Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair Lecture in Israeli Studies. Born in Poland in 1933, he has lived in Israel since 1939. He studied at the Hebrew University and the London School of Economics and has held visiting appointments at Yale, Cornell, the University of California, Wesleyan University, City University of New York, Oxford, Australian National University, Central European University in Budapest, Cardozo School of Law in New York and Northwestern University. At the Hebrew University he held the positions of Chair of the Department of Political Science, Director of the Levi Eshkol Institute for Social and Political Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Director of the Institute for European Studies.
His books, which have been translated into many languages, include: The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Israel and the Palestinians, The Making of Modern Zionism, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, Communitarianism and Individualism (with Avner de-Shalit), The Law of Religious Identity: Models for Post-Communism (with András Sajó), Integration and Identity and Politics and Identities in Transformation (both with Werner Weidenfeld), and Europe’s Century of Discontent: The Legacies of Fascism, Nazism and Communism (with Zeev Sternhell). He participated in preparing a Hebrew edition of Theodor Herzl’s Diaries and wrote an historical Introduction to the edition. Recently he prepared an English edition of Moses Hess’ The Holy History of Mankind, published in the Cambridge University Press series of texts in the history of political thought.