On October 16, Fairfield University’s Bennett Center for Judaic Studies will host renowned Israel scholar Ken Stein, PhD, founding president and chief content officer for the Center for Israel Education (CIE), for the Joan and Henry Katz Lecture in Judaic Studies. He will deliver a timely lecture titled, “Israel@77 through a lens of October 7, 2023,” at 5:30 p.m. in the Aloysius P. Kelley Center.
From January 1977 until December 2022, when he became an emeritus professor, Dr. Stein had taught Middle Eastern history, political science, and Israel Studies to more than 5,800 students over 44 years. He is currently the founding president of the Center for Israel Education (CIE) and its chief content officer.
In 1998, Dr. Stein established the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel (ISMI) at Emory University, then the first permanent institute or center in the U.S. created exclusively for the study of modern Israel. Building on ISMI’s public outreach in the early 2000s—which initiated Jewish educator seminars and curriculum writing—he founded the Center for Israel Education (CIE) in 2008, focusing exclusively on educational enrichment for Jewish educators, rabbis, non-Jewish clergy, students, and young adults.
Dr. Stein is the author of five books, numerous papers and more than three dozen scholarly articles. In the 1980s, he launched engaging undergraduate internship programs as Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center, at ISMI, and at the CIE. His scholarly expertise focuses on the origins of modern Israel, the evolution of the conflict, Palestinian history, the Arab Israeli negotiating process, U.S.-Israeli relations, and Israel education at both college and precollegiate levels. 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), remain standard works 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 in conjunction with ARZA.
At Emory, Dr. Stein received awards for teaching excellence, lifelong mentoring of students and for internationalizing the curriculum. His fundraising initiatives brought to Emory College, sixteen visiting Israeli professors in the social sciences. As CIE's chief content author, he maintains strict scholarly integrity in teaching Israel through written and digital platforms.
Dr. Stein earned his BA from Franklin and Marshall College and earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate in Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. In the early 1970s, he was an advanced graduate student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In Spring 2006, he served as a visiting professor of political science at Brown University.
This event is made possible by the generosity of Debby and David Zieff.
To register for Dr. Stein’s lecture, please visit: The Joan and Henry Katz Lecture in Judaic Studies.
To explore upcoming events hosted by Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, please visit fairfield.edu/bennettcenter.
