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Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War redefined boundaries in the Middle East and solidified Israel as a regional power, the world awoke to the news that Hamas launched a bloody surprise attack from Gaza into Israel. The ongoing terrorist attacks have killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians and prompted Israeli leadership to declare that the country is at war with Hamas. The terrorist attacks have also led to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have been caught in the crossfire between Hamas and the Israeli defense. What led to Hamas's attack? How has and will the international community respond? And what might we expect to see moving forward, drawing on historical precedence? Join Perry World House for an expert discussion on the unfolding events in the Middle East.
SPEAKERS
Guy Grossman is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is in applied political economy, with substantive focus on migration and conflict processes, and a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa and Israel-Palestine. Grossman is the founder and co-director of Penn’s Development Research Initiative and a faculty affiliate of groups including Stanford’s Immigration Policy Lab and Penn’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration. Grossman, a former IDF officer, has published extensively on various aspects of Israeli politics. His work has appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization and Journal of Politics. He holds a PhD in political science from Columbia University, as well as an MA in political philosophy and LLB in law, both from Tel-Aviv University.
Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018. He was awarded the Stockholm Prize for human rights in 2015 and the Tulip Prize in 2018. He is currently the President and CEO of the International Peace Institute and Perry World House Professor of the Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, Al Hussein was appointed a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice, and human rights, founded by Nelson Mandela. He served twice as Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations (in New York) and once as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States. In January 2014, he served as president of the UN Security Council and earlier, in 2002, was elected the first president of the governing body of the International Criminal Court (ICC) -- guiding the court's growth in its first three years from 2002 to 2005. He also represented Jordan twice before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). From 1994 to 1996, he served as a UN civilian peacekeeper with UNPROFOR. Al Hussein holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge.
Trudy Rubin is a Perry World House Visiting Fellow and Worldview columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of the Inquirer’s editorial board. Before coming to the Inquirer, she was Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, covering Israel and the Arab world. Prior to that, she was a staff writer on American politics for the Economist. In recent years she has written from Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Russia, Israel, the West Bank, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, and more. In 2019, Rubin received the Overseas Press Club of America’s Flora Lewis Award for best commentary in international affairs. In 2001 and 2017, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq. In 1990 she was an exchange journalist at the Moscow News in Russia, and in 1974/5 she was an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow in Cairo and Beirut. Rubin is a graduate of Smith College and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
MODERATOR
Michael Weisberg is interim director of Perry World House, as well as Bess W. Heyman President’s Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. A renowned philosopher of science and senior negotiator at United Nations Climate Conferences, he is editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy, director of the Penn Laboratory for Understanding Science, and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World and co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion. Professor Weisberg also serves as senior adviser to the Maldivian Minister of Environment and advisor to the Maldivian Ambassador to the United Nations. He received a PhD and MA in Philosophy from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry and BA in Philosophy with Highest Distinction from the University of California at San Diego.
