Elie Rekness Named Visiting Crown Professor in Middle East Studies

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Elie Rekness, a visiting professor in the Jewish Studies Program and a professor at Tel Aviv University, has been named the Visiting Crown Professor in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University.

Rekhess is one of Israel's leading experts on the Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel, Jewish-Arab relations, Palestinian politics and the Islamic resurgence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

He has held a variety of significant advisory posts, including senior consultant to the Abraham Fund for the enhancement of Jewish-Arab coexistence since 1994; senior consultant on Arab minority affairs to the Israeli prime minister's office; senior consultant on Arab affairs to the Histadrut labor organization; and member of the board of Sikkuy–The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel. A regular public lecturer and television commentator on Arab issues in Israel and the territories, he served as a strategic adviser to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the 1999 election campaign and as an adviser to Matan Vilna'i, chairman of the ministerial committee on the Arabs in Israel.

Rekhess is the author of Islamic Fundamentalism in Israel (forthcoming, 2009) and editor of Together but Apart: Mixed Cities in Israel (2007) and The Arab Minority in Israel and the 17th Knesset Elements (2007). He is co-editor of The Status of the Arab Minority in the Jewish Nation-State (2005) and of The Municipal Elections in the Arab and Druze Sector (2003. His other publications include The Arab Minority in Israel: Between Communism and Arab Nationalism (1993); three edited volumes, The Arabs in Israeli Politics: Dilemmas of Identity (1998), Arab Politics in Israel at a Crossroads (1996) and The Arab Minority in Israel: Dilemmas of Political Orientation and Social Change (1994); and numerous shorter studies.

As Visiting Crown Professor at Northwestern, Rekhess will be affiliated with the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of History. He will teach courses on modern Israel and the Middle East.
As a member of the Middle Eastern history faculty at Tel Aviv University, Rekhess serves as senior research fellow in the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and as the head of the university's Program on Jewish-Arab Cooperation in Israel, which is sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.