Avishai Margalit / *Discussion* Religion and Politics in Israel and in the Middle East - a View from Jerusalem

A public discussion based on Avishai Margalit's Feb. 25 lecture "Religion and Politics in Israel and in the Middle East - a View from Jerusalem."

Avishai Margalit is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is one of the foremost thinkers and commentators on the contemporary human condition, the moral issues of our time, and current problems facing Western societies. In addition to his influence as a philosopher, he is highly regarded for his profound and cogent observations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the broader struggle between Islam and the West. As the author of Idolatry (with Moshe Halbertal, 1992), The Decent Society (1996), Views in Review: Politics and Culture in the State of the Jews (1998), The Ethics of Memory (2002), Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (with Ian Buruma, 2004), and On Compromise and Rotten Compromises (2009), Margalit has transformed philosophical perspectives on a range of political and societal issues.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ph.D. 1970; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Lecturer 1970–73, Senior Lecturer 1973–80, Associate Professor and Professor 1980–98, Schulman Professor of Philosophy 1998–2006, Emeritus 2006–; Institute for Advanced Study, George F. Kennan Professor 2006–2011; University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Rockefeller Fellow 1995–96; University of Oxford, Bertelsman Professor 2001–02; Stanford University, Tanner Lecturer 2005; Spinozalens Award 2001; EMET Prize in the Humanities 2007; Israel Prize in Philosophy 2010

He is the winner of the 2012 Ernst Bloch Prize in philosophy.This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Religioius Studies, the Patrick Suppes Center for History and Philosophy of Science, and the Stanford Humanities Center.