Update this content.
Join us at AJ for a wonderful weekend of programming with Prof. Ken Stein!
You can REGISTER HERE for any or all of the events below.
Friday, April 8 at 6:15 PM (during the Kabbalat Shabbat service, with oneg to follow) (In person and via Zoom)
TOPIC: Jimmy Carter: Calculated Ambivalence
While teaching at Emory University since 1977, Professor Stein played an important role in the organization and development of the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta. For more than a dozen years in the 1980s and 1990s, he advised former President Carter about Middle Eastern matters, traveled with him to the region, and wrote a book with him. As a world-class scholar, Dr. Stein researched, wrote, and taught about American diplomacy in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, publishing Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat Kissinger, Carter, Begin, and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (1999). When Carter wrote the highly controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in 2006, Dr. Stein dramatically split with Carter for his false claims about Israel and American Jews. Stein will speak about how Carter and other presidents develop their attitudes toward Israel and the negotiating process, and particularly on the roots and evolution of Carter’s involvement in peace negotiations and the growth of his animus towards Israel over the years.
Relevant Reading: Kenneth W. Stein, "My Problem with Jimmy Carter's Book," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2007, pp. 3-15
COST: No Charge.
Saturday, April 9 at 12:30 PM (Kiddush lunch included) (In person only)
TOPIC: Intelligent Design and Not the Big Bang Theory: The Zionist State, 1848-1949
Was there a Jewish State in 1939? With the use of archival and published sources of the period, Dr. Stein will unfold with us the causes and political choices that contributed to Zionist state making before the tragedy of the Holocaust was known to the world. What roles did the British, Palestinian Arabs, and Jewish leaders play in carving out a Jewish territory in Eretz Yisrael? Was the Jewish state’s establishment inevitable? What is the historical context for Israel’s unfolding and the Palestinian dispersion in the period from 1945-1949? What do the sources tell us?
Relevant Reading: Zionists and Arabs — Historical Sources Unfold the Jewish State.
You can review the socio-economic differences and distances between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in the Census for Palestine, 1931, here.
All are welcome to join Saturday morning Shabbat services prior to the lecture and lunch, starting at 9:30 AM.
COST: Now free of charge for all, but registration is necessary.
Sunday, April 10 at 10:00 AM (Brunch included) (In person only)
TOPIC: Why Negotiations Don’t Work Anymore
Why did Arab-Israeli Negotiations work in the 1970s but Palestinian-Israeli talks are dead in the water in 2021? What criteria/elements were present then but are not there now? Why have six Arab countries recognized Israel, and removed the Palestinian issue as the top priority on inter-Arab and national agendas? What does survey research tell us about the differences in American Jewish and Israeli attitudes about Israeli security, the settlements, and whether a two-state solution is doable? What do Arab sources reveal about Palestinian politics?
All are welcome to join Sunday morning Shacharit services prior to the lecture and brunch, starting at 9:00 AM.
COST: $36 for AJ members; $54 for non-members; $18 for all students.
Meet Prof. Ken Stein
Prof. Ken Stein’s expertise focuses on the origins of modern Israel, the conflict, Palestinian history, the Arab-Israeli negotiating process, and U.S.-Israeli relations. He is the Director of the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel (ISMI) at Emory University. There, he has been the recipient of awards for teaching excellence, life-long mentoring of students, and for internationalizing the curriculum. Prof. Stein's fund-raising initiatives were responsible for bringing to Emory College sixteen visiting Israeli professors in the social sciences.
- Prof. Stein established ISMI in 1998, which was the first permanent Institute or Center in the United States created for the study of modern Israel. An offshoot of ISMI, the Center for Israel Education (CIE), was established in 2008.
- From 2008 to 2021, Prof. Stein was the Founding President of the Center for Israel Education (CIE). His leadership of CIE enabled 2,900 Jewish educators and hundreds of thousands of Jewish students across North and South America to deepen their knowledge of modern Israel.
- In 2021, Prof. Stein evolved into the position of CIE’s Chief Content Officer. As CIE’s chief content author, he maintains strict scholarly integrity in teaching Israel through written and digital platforms. Context, content, and perspective remain the cornerstones of excellence in Israel education. He continues to teach in all of CIE’s Israel learning initiatives.
- Prof. Stein is the author of five books, numerous papers, and scholarly articles. Two of his books, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 (1984) and Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace (1999) have remained standards in their fields. A third, The June 1967 War: How it Changed Jewish, Israeli, and Middle Eastern History (2017) was published for adult and teen audiences.
- Prof. Stein was educated at Franklin and Marshall College (BA) and earned his advanced degrees from the University of Michigan (two MA degrees and a doctorate in Middle Eastern History). In the early 1970s, he was an advanced graduate student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In Spring 2006, he was a visiting professor of Political Science at Brown University.