Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, President

At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Kenneth W. Stein is the William E. Schatten Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Political Science and Israeli Studies. Since coming to Emory in 1977, he founded and developed the International Studies Center, was the first director of the Carter Center (1983-1986), and established in 1988, the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel (ISMI). In Spring 2006, he was a visiting professor of Political Science at Brown University.

Dr. Stein is the author of numerous books and publications. Among them are Hebrew and English editions of Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (Routledge:1999); Making Peace Among Arabs and Israelis: Lessons from Fifty Years of Negotiating Experience (United States Institute for Peace:1991), and The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 (North Carolina Press: 1984, 1985, and 2003). His almost three dozen journal articles and book chapters have focused on the origins of modern Israel, American foreign policy toward the Middle East, history of the yishuv (1880s-1940s), Palestinian politics, inter-Arab relations, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Stein serves on the Editorial Board of Middle East Quarterly.

His honors at Emory University include recognition for internationalizing the curriculum and the highest teaching awards for his undergraduate teaching. In Atlanta, he has been honored by the American Jewish Committee and Congregation Or Hadash for his activities as a public intellectual in raising the understanding about Israel and the Middle East. The ADL and the Israel on Campus Coalition awarded him the 2007 Ross Award for his intellectual integrity in speaking out against the falsehoods in former President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

Under Stein’s guidance, ISMI has fulfilled two objectives: increased the course offerings and knowledge about Israel and the Middle East in Emory College and across the university, and, instituted multi-faceted pre-collegiate teacher training and curriculum development on topics relating to Israel and the Middle East. Since 1999, Stein has raised funds and brought to Emory nine visiting Israeli scholars, where 18 new courses were offered, enrolling some 300 students. Since 2001, more than 1000 pre-collegiate teachers in the US and Canada have engaged in a variety of workshops where under his direction, Israel content and pedagogy are taught. On topics relating to modern Israel, Stein is writing innovative curriculum material for 7th to 12th graders, and, developing a website for that purpose. Support for the teacher and student curriculum projects come from a variety of foundations. On July 1, 2008, the recently established Center of Israel Education (CIE) in Atlanta, which Stein also heads, took over the Israel outreach activities, including conduct of the pre-collegiate teacher workshops, curriculum development projects, and engagements in long distance learning.

Dr. Stein received his undergraduate BA degree from Franklin and Marshall College and two Masters and his doctoral degree from the University of Michigan (1976). From 1971-1973, he did graduate work and language study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In Atlanta, he has served extensive stints as personal director of the Greenfield Hebrew Academy, on the regional boards of the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation.

A selection of popular writing, scholarly articles, and work in progress includes:

• "A Daring Declaration," Forward Online, May 7, 2008, http://www.forward.com/articles/13309/.

• “Annapolis: Precedents and Transactions, But No Transformations,” Tel Aviv Notes: An Update on Middle Eastern Developments by the Moshe Dayan Center. December 27, 2007.

"My Problem with Jimmy Carter's Book," Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 3-16.

• “Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip: Precedents, Motivations, and Outcomes,” La Communita Internationale (Rome), Vol. 4/2005, pp. 633-641.

• “Arafat ist nicht Sadat,” Internationale Politik, Vol. 10 no. 58, (2003), pp. 13-22.

• “Sadat, Carter and Begin: An Unequally Sided Triangle,” The Camp David Process, Jerusalem, Israel: The Menachem Begin Heritage Center, November 2002, pp. 32-42.

• “Israel Reconciling Internal Disparities,” in Judith S. Yaphe (ed.), The Middle East in 2015:The Impact of Regional Trends on U.S. Strategic Planning Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, July 2002, pp. 75-96.

• “The Link Between War and Diplomacy: The Kilometer 101 Talks After the October 1973 War,” in Richard Parker (ed.), The October 1973 Middle East War, Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 2000, pp. 361-373.

• “Egyptian-Israeli Relations, 1973-1997,” Israel Affairs, (vol. 3, nos. 3 & 4), Spring/Summer 1997, pp. 296-320. Also in Efraim Karsh (ed.) From Rabin to Netanyahu, London: Frank Cass, 1997.

• “A Historiographic Review of Literature on the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 5, December 1991, pp. 1450-1465.

• “One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” in Laurence J. Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State, New York University Press, 1991, pp. 57-81.

• “The Jewish National Fund: Land Purchase Methods and Priorities, 1924-1939.Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 4 (April 1984):190-205.

These articles and others may be found at www.ismi.emory.edu