2009 Scholar-in-Residence: Benny Morris
Benny Morris, professor in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University,
will be in residence at Skidmore from the first of September through mid-October 2009.
While in residence, he will be teaching a five-week course, HI 398 "History Workshop:
Milestones in the Arab-Zionist Conflict 1881–1948" and on Tuesday, September 29 he
will deliver a public lecture on the Israel-Palestine conflict, drawing especially
on his two recent books: 1948, A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (Yale University Press, 2008) and One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel\Palestine Conflict (Yale University Press, 2009). Throughout his residency he will also visit classes
and meet with students and faculty in other formal and informal venues.
Born in Israel in 1948, the year of Israel's founding, from parents who emigrated
from Britain to Israel in 1947, Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering
atmosphere."* His father was an Israeli diplomat, and Morris attended schools in Jerusalem
and New York City, graduating from Ramaz High School in New York. He earned a B.A.
in European history and European philosophy from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and
a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in Modern European History. Morris completed his
military service as a paratropper, serving from 1967 to 1969, and in 1982 his division
was called up to take part in the invasion of Lebanon. At that time he was also working
as a journalist, and he interviewed Palestinian refugees from Gallilee who were then
living in a refugee camp near Tyre. In 1988, during the first intifada, he was jailed
briefly for refusing to serve when his division was called to go to the West Bank.
While a journalist at the The Jerusalem Post for many years, Morris established his reputation as an historian—and as preeminient
among the "new historians"—with the 1988 publication of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, in which he "revolutionized Israeli historiography and, to a great extent, a nation's
understanding of its own birth." In this and subsequent writing—nearly a dozen books
and countless articles—Morris has painted "a far more complex picture [of the Israeli-Arab
conflict] than many Israelis were prepared to accept," and indeed a more troubling
picture than the scholarly and general public on all sides of the political divide
have frequently been happy to receive. Indeed, though he characterizes himself as
a liberal Zionist, his work has frequently provoked both Zionists and Liberals. Without
abandoning his allegiance to the historical record, Morris has also played out the
consequences of his findings, as he sees them, in commentaries on the current political
conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world. Never one to "flatter
anyone's prejudices, least of all his own," and possessed now of what he has called
a "cosmic pessimism," Morris' mastery of and perspective on the history of the Arab-Zionist
conflict is unique, if not unmatched.
Morris is a senior associate member at St Antony's College, Oxford, was a MacArthur
fellow at the Brookings Institute, a fellow at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University,
and has been a visiting professor at the University of Florida-Gainesville, Dartmouth
College and the University of Maryland-College Park. He has lectured widely at a number
of colleges and universities, including Oxford University, MIT, Brandeis University,
Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Wesleyan College,
Middlebury College, University of Brussels, Georgetown University, Yale University,
University of Indiana, University of Leyden, University of Utrecht, the University
of Amsterdam and at many other venues in the U.S. and Europe.
*Much of the biographical detail here has been drawn from David Remnick's excellent
review in the New Yorker (May 5, 2008), the full text of which may be found here:.
Benny Morris and Robert Malley, panel discussion
"After Camp David: The Future of the Two State Solution,"
moderated by Steven Hoffmann
Thursday, October 8 at 8 p.m.,
Gannett Auditorium
Robert Malley is currently Middle East and North Africa program director for the International
Crisis Group in Washington, D.C., where he directs analysts based in Amman, Cairo,
Beirut, Tel Aviv and Baghdad. Together they report on the political, social and economic
factors affecting the risk of conflict and make policy recommendations to address
these threats. The team covers events from Iran to Morocco, with a heavy focus on
the Arab-Israeli conflict, the situation in Iraq and Islamist movements throughout
the region. Malley also covers developments in the United States that affect policy
toward the Middle East. Indeed, from 1994 to 1996 he worked in the White House as
director for democracy, human rights and humanitarian affairs with the National Security
Council; from 1996 to 1998 he was executive assistant to Samuel R. Berger, then the
national security advisor; and from 1998 to 2001 he was special assistant to President
Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and a senior member of the American team at peace
talks held at Camp David in the summer of 2000.
Readers of the New York Review of Books over the last decade know Malley as among the most thoughtful and best-informed observers
of the Middle East today. He is and continues to be more than an observer, working
not merely to articulate the conflicts for policymakers and scholars but also to engage
those involved in conflict to find their way or ways out. Malley is a graduate of
Yale University, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a Ph.D.
in political philosophy. He also earned a J.D. at Harvard Law School and from 1991
to 1992 clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White.