Current Affairs Working Group: Israel and American Foreign Policy
Join this working group to hear from expert writers who can help you understand and analyze events shaping Israel, as well as America’s approach to the Middle East.
Members of this working group will meet twice a month to discuss ideas, events, and policies that affect the US-Israel relationship. From Iran’s nuclear ambitions and proxy terrorism to Russia’s expansionism and China’s economic competition with the United States, this semester will focus on defining and understanding the contemporary threats posed by the U.S. and Israel’s adversaries. Can the U.S. and Israel act together as effective allies to combat these threats? What is the nature of Israel-China relations? In what ways are U.S. and Israeli national security concerns aligned?
The working group will consist of four targeted, bi-weekly meetings on Wednesdays beginning Wednesday, March 22nd at 7:00 PM EST. Each meeting will focus on a pressing and relevant issue, based on current events and developments leading up to the meeting. The working group will meet on the following dates: March 22nd, March 29th, April 19th, and May 3rd.
Close to the date of each meeting, members will be sent details on the guests. We will invite the best writers who are commenting on items in the news at the time of our meetings. Confirmed members of the working group who attend consistently will also be given the opportunity to work directly with a mentor from Tikvah to explore career and internship options.
Current Members: Select Your Classes Here
Here was our Fall 2022 line-up of topics and speakers:
- The Death of the Israeli Left with special guest Neil Rogachevsky author of The Not-So-Strange Death of Israel’s Labor Party and Will Israel’s Next Government Last Longer than a Container of Hummus
- Building a Conservative Movement in Israel with special guest Ronen Shoval, founder of Im Tirtzu and Director of The Argaman Institute
- The Making of Israeli Strategy/The Israeli Perspective on US-Israel Relations with special guest Jonathan Shanzer, Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
- American Jews and Israel with special guest Elliott Abrams, Chairman of the Tikvah Fund and The Vandeberg Coalition and a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.
About our Dean:
Tamara Berens is the Director of Young Professional Programs at the Tikvah Fund and is a contributor to Mosaic. She graduated King’s College London with a degree in War Studies. Tamara worked for CAMERA, running their student activities in England and Scotland, and completed internships at think-tanks in Westminster, England and Washington, D.C., before beginning one of the inaugural Krauthammer Fellowships, then at Mosaic. Her writing has appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, The National Interest, The Spectator, and other outlets.
Previous Guests Include:
Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams is the chairman of Tikvah, as well as chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. He served as special assistant to the president and NSC senior director for the Near East and North Africa in the first term of George W. Bush, and as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the second term. In the Trump administration, he served in the State Department as special representative for Iran and for Venezuela. He is the author of Undue Process (1993), Security and Sacrifice (1995), Faith or Fear (1997), and Tested by Zion (2013), and writes widely on U.S. foreign policy, with special focus on the Middle East and the issues of democracy and human rights. His most recent book is Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring (2017).
Dr. Neil Rogachevsky
Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University
Neil Rogachevsky is associate director and assistant professor at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, where he researches and teaches Israel studies and political philosophy. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Mosaic, Jewish Review of Books, American Interest, Ha'aretz, American Affairs, and other publications. With Dov Zigler, he is the author of Israel's Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation's Founding Moment and is currently working on a book on constitutional debates in 1948-1949. He received his BA from McGill University, his MA from the University of Toronto, and his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Ronen Shoval
Argaman Institute
Dr. Ronen Shoval is Dean of the Argaman Institute and a scholar of political philosophy. Dr. Shoval is also a columnist, founder of the Im Tirtzu movement, and former Chairman of the Professors for Political and Economic Strength. He also founded the hi-tech company Blink where he presently serves as CEO. He is volunteer Public Chairman of the Uri Tzvi Greenberg Heritage House.
Jonathan Schanzer
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars. He is also on the leadership team of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power, a project on the use of financial and economic power as a tool of statecraft. Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he played an integral role in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. He has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum.
Jonathan testifies often before Congress and publishes widely in the American and international media. He has appeared on American television channels such as Fox News and CNN, and Arabic language television channels such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera.
