Take Notice: The Power of the Unremarkable
How do our linguistic priorities characterize the way we perceive the world, and how do they reinforce cultural norms? Eviatar Zerubavel, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, explains.
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Are We Living in an Unprecedented Age of People Power?
Prof. Erica Chenoweth, a scholar of international relations, says that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of non-violent protests in the world. She knows because she counts them, rigorously; she also counts when they work and why.
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On Hell and Other People: The Enduring Relevance of Existentialism
Dr. Dror Yinon reviews a series of lectures on Existentialism that recently took place at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He lays out the fundamentals of this philosophical tradition and analyzes its ongoing relevance in the age of populism and post-truth.
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Living in Denial: A 21st-Century Story
Dr. Keith Kahn-Harris, a British sociologist and commentator, discusses his new book “Denial: The Unspeakable Truth.” It attempts to analyze the emergence and growing prevalence of denialism – a quasi-nihilist reflex that subsumed healthy skepticism and fact-based debate.
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A Road to Forgiveness: How Societies Cope with Collective Trauma
How do societies recover from major violence and terrible injustice? How do they cope with collective trauma, perpetrators, guilt, and is there a road to forgiveness? Professor Ruti Teitel discusses her scholarly work on transitional justice.
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On the Media: Public Broadcasting, Regulation and Press Freedom in Israel
Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the Media Reform Program and the Open Government Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, joins us to discuss media policy in Israel and the way government interference may infringe on the country’s relatively robust freedom of the press.
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My Kingdom for a Constitution
Yedidia Stern is worried about disturbing the balance of a Jewish and democratic state, as the nation-state law threatens to do. He believes that Israel must be a Jewish state, but without a legal anchor for equality, society is in trouble.
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Business and Human Rights: A Contradiction in Terms?
Can we reconcile between business development and safeguarding human rights? David Bilchitz, professor of law at the University of Johannesburg, proposes a legal framework to do just that in his new book, “Building a Treaty on Business and Human Rights”.
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Live from the 2018 AIS Conference: The ‘Berkeley School’ Approach to Hebrew Literature
On this plenary session at the 2018 annual conference of the Association for Israel Studies, Prof. Chana Kronfeld, Dr. Yael Segalovitz, and host Gilad Halpern discuss the attempts to “de-ghettoize” Hebrew literature and study it in a broader and richer context.
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The Survival of the Sentient: The Evolution of the Soul
Prof. Eva Jablonka, a philosopher of science at Tel Aviv University, discusses her forthcoming book “The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul”. Can we establish the development of conscience within the evolution process? And if so, how?
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