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= Bernard Avishai =
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Introduction
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Bernard Avishai is an adjunct professor of Business at Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. He lives in Jerusalem and the United States.
He has taught at Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), and Dartmouth College, and was director of the Zell
Entrepreneurship Program at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in
Israel. From 1998 to 2001 he was International Director of
Intellectual Capital at KPMG LLP. Before this he headed product
development at Monitor Group, with which he is still associated. From
1986 to 1991 he was technology editor of 'Harvard Business Review'. A
Guggenheim Fellow, Avishai holds a doctorate in political economy from
the University of Toronto. Before turning to management, he covered
the Middle East as a journalist. He has written many articles and
commentaries for 'The New Yorker', 'The New York Review of Books',
'Harvard Business Review', 'Harper's Magazine' and other publications.
He is the author of three books on Israel, including the widely read
'The Tragedy of Zionism', and the 2008 'The Hebrew Republic'.
Academic career
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Bernard Avishai was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1949. The son of the
late Ben Shaicovitch, president of Canada's Zionist Men's Association
during the 1950s, he volunteered for farm work on an Israeli
collective during the Six-Day War, an experience that affected many of
his generation. He and his first wife, the artist Susan Avishai, moved
to Israel in 1972 while he was still working on a doctorate in
political economy for the University of Toronto, and began writing
about Israel, the history of Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
After the October War of 1973, he published a series of political
essays in 'The New York Review of Books', to which he contributed
regularly until the mid-1980s. His reports anticipated the 1977
election that brought Menachem Begin and the Israeli right to power
for a generation.
Avishai earned his doctorate in 1978, writing mainly on the work of
Hobbes and Marx under C. B. Macpherson. He moved to Boston in 1980,
where he taught humanities at MIT, and joined 'Dissent' magazine's
editorial board. His first book, 'The Tragedy of Zionism', was
published in 1985 to considerable controversy, since it suggested that
Israel's occupation was a symptom of a democracy plagued by
anachronistic Zionist institutions and ideas. The controversy led to
his being denied tenure at MIT, according to Avishai, and he left for
Harvard Business School in 1986. He there took up a position as an
editor of 'Harvard Business Review' ('HBR'). In 1987, he was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship for continuing work on the writer Arthur
Koestler, which led to eventual articles in 'The New Yorker',
'Partisan Review', and 'Salmagundi'. His second book, 'A New
Israel', was published in 1990.
Avishai was Visiting Professor at the Fuqua School of Business and
Senior Fellow at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke
University, where he taught courses on the new economy and public
policy.
Today, Avishai serves as a visiting professor specializing in
political economy at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Business career
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His years at 'HBR', where he became the magazine's technology and
strategy editor, changed the direction of his work considerably. He
brought to publication dozens of articles on computer-based
manufacturing, the implications of burgeoning information networks,
and globalization. While preparing to branch off into knowledge
management consulting, he began to consider the implications of high
technology for Israel's economy and society. In 1991, his last at
'HBR', he published "Israel's Future: Brainpower, High tech—and Peace"
in the magazine, the first to predict Israel's economic opportunity.
He then joined Monitor Group as its head of product development, and
became International Director of Intellectual Capital at KPMG LLP in
1998. During these years in management consulting, he continued to
contribute articles, mainly on Israeli politics and economy, to 'The
New Yorker', 'The New York Times', 'The American Prospect', 'Fortune',
and other magazines.
He remains active as a consultant associated with Monitor Group, and
has taught entrepreneurial business planning in Libya and other places
under its auspices.
''The Hebrew Republic''
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In 2002, he married Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, a professor of literature at
the Hebrew University, and returned to Israel and teaching, becoming
director of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at Interdisciplinary
Center Herzliya. In 2005, he wrote the widely cited article "Saving
Israel from Itself" in 'Harper's Magazine', which led to the book 'The
Hebrew Republic'. This book argues that Israel's professional elites
have made a success of globalization, and have become a natural
constituency for a successful peace process; but that Israeli
democracy's continuing neglect of its Arab minority, now 1/5 of the
country, and the special privileges accorded to Israel's
ultra-Orthodox, also 1/5 of the country, is sowing the seeds of a
disaster which only a settlement with the Palestinians can prevent. As
he puts it in his book, "Israel cannot have an economy like
Singapore's through a nationalities war like Serbia's."
Personal life
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Avishai is married to Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi. He is the father of three
children. He divides his time between homes in Jerusalem and Wilmot,
New Hampshire.
External links
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* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982324.html Getting to the
promised land]
* [http://bernardavishai.blogspot.com/ Bernard Avishai Dot Com]
Responses, mainly to rash opinions about Israel and its conflicts
* [http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/19803 Video (with mp3 available)
discussion on the Middle East with Avishai] and Sam Bahour on
Bloggingheads.tv
License
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Avishai