The Central European University

The Central European University

Jewish Studies Project

cordially invites you to a lecture by

Shlomo Avineri

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Obama, the Middle East and Islam: Promise and Reality

Tuesday, March 9 at 6 p.m.

Popper Room, Monument Building

On entering the White House, President Obama promised to open a new page in American policies in the Middle East: offering respect and dialogue to the world of Islam, moving from confrontation to engagement with Iran, robustly and urgently seeking a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This new synergy opened new vistas of hope in the region and was welcome by the international community as well. A year later, there is very little Obama can show for his efforts, nor does his escalation of the war in Afghanistan appear as a success story. Was this new approach a strategic mistake, or is harsh reality trumping the idealism of a President with little experience in foreign affairs? And what are the prospects for a successful approach to these problems..

SHLOMO AVINERI, Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a graduate of the Hebrew University and the London School of Economics, and served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He held visiting appointments at Yale, Cornel, University of California, Cardozo School of Law, Australian National University, Central European University (Budapest), Oxford and Northwestern University; and has been a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, both in Washington, D.C., and the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. He was member of the Egyptian-Israeli Commission which negotiated the Cultural, Scientific and Educational Agreement between the two countries. In 1996 he received the Israel Prize, the country's highest civilian decoration. Among his books: The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, Israel and the Palestinians, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, The Making of Modern Zionism, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, and Communitarianism and Individualism. His most recent book is an intellectual biography of Theodore Herzl (in Hebrew).

A reception will follow