Hagar Kotef, Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London, discusses her book The Colonizing Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine, analyzing the concept of “home” as both a physical endeavor and an object of attachment, against the backdrop of the Zionist settlement and the dispossession of Palestinians that it entailed

Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times, discusses his new book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. How have the failings of the late 20th-century economic system affected governance, and vice-versa?

Prof. On Barak of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University discusses his book, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization.

He takes on a historical journey to think of energy in the historical context of the making of the Middle East as a region, during the long 19th century. Instead of thinking that we are in a transition from coal to oil to cleaner energies, he argues, we need to understand the persistence of coal in the Middle East and how our reliance on it has shaped our politics, economics and culture.

Dr Yossi Harpaz, sociologist at Tel Aviv University, discusses his book Citizenship 2.0 and how the relationship between citizenship and other sociological categories, such as migration and national identity, has evolved.

Jonathan Graubart, professor of political science at San Diego State University, discusses his book Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs, offering a contemporary re-evaluation of early 20th-century thought on Jewish sovereignty and statehood.

This episode is part of a series co-sponsored by UCLA’s Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and co-hosted by its director, Prof. Dov Waxman

Dr Andreas Hackl, anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh, discusses his new book, The Invisible Palestinians: The Hidden Struggle for Inclusion in Jewish Tel Aviv

Derek Penslar, professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, discusses his forthcoming book Zionism: An Emotional State, an interdisciplinary attempt to study the history of Jewish nationalism through a history of emotions lens.

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Dr Shivi Greenfield, political theorist and Deputy Director General for Strategy and Planning, discusses his book Judaism and Liberalism: A Metaphysical Tale of Two Siblings. In it, he claims that not only can the two coexist, they also stem from the same metaphysical source.

Itamar Mann, Professor of Law at the University of Haifa, specializing, among other things, in international law and legal theory, discusses his book Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law.

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Professor of Jewish History at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, specializing in religious and political thought in early modern and contemporary Judaism, discusses his new book Mishna Consciousness, Bible Consciousness: Safed and Zionist Culture. The book considers Safed (Tzfat), the old Jewish center in the Galilee, as the crux of a religious and political worldview that could – and still might – pose an alternative to the prevalent one.

The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.