FOLLOWING THE SCREENING OF THE MOVIE THE JUDGE FOUR EXPERTS WILL DISCUSS: “ISRAEL’S DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICY IMPLICATIONS”  with Dr. Yael Aronoff, Dr. Noga Morag-Levine, Dr. Alon Tal and Dr. Rami Zeedan 

Thursday, September 14, RCAH Theater, C20 Snyder-Phillips Hall, 362 Bogue St.

5:00pm Welcome and Intro to The Judge

5:15pm Screening of The Judge (54m)

6:10pm Complimentary Pizza outside the Theater

6:20-8:00pm a Symposium with Dr. Yael Aronoff, Dr. Noga Morag-Levine, Dr. Alon Tal and Dr. Rami Zeedan

The symposium will be live-streamed on our YouTube Channel: @serlinginstituteforjewishs8606

A panel of four experts will discuss the new Israeli government’s efforts to overhaul the judicial system and weaken the Supreme Court, and more broadly, the domestic and foreign policy implications of the current government’s efforts to weaken the checks and balances system, and to expand and entrench Israeli settler presence on the West Bank. What, they will ask, are the underlying causes and triggers for the government actions, and what are the perspectives of the many people and societal sectors who have been protesting these actions for months?  They will also discuss potential implications for a variety of issues, including for Arab-Palestinian society in Israel, for differing Druze and Palestinian narratives about the changes, as well as for women’s rights and on environmental protections. They will also discuss the Court’s consideration, on September 12th, of the many petitions filed in order to deem the new government’s new law unconstitutional. This new law bars the judiciary from striking down decisions by the government and cabinet ministers on the basis of being unreasonable.

Dr. Yael Aronoff is the Director of the Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel, is the Serling Chair of Israel Studies, and is Professor of International Relations in James Madison College at MSU. Dr. Aronoff is past President of the Association of Israel Studies.  Her book, The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace, (Cambridge University Press 2014), compares and contrasts six Israeli prime ministers and their decision-making on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr. Aronoff’s co-edited book, Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond, with Ilan Peleg and Saliba Sarsar, (Lexington Books, 2021), includes contributions from ten leading scholars in political science, anthropology, Israel studies, and Middle East affairs that address the theme of continuity and change in political culture as a tribute to Professor Myron (Mike) J. Aronoff. Her recent publications include “Jerusalem: My Favorite City in the World!” in What Jerusalem Means to Us: Jewish Perspectives and Reflections, Eds. Saliba Sarsar and Carole Monica C. Burnett, Jerusalem Peace Institute and Noble Book Publishing Inc., 2023; “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Handbook of Israeli Democracy, ed. P.R. Kumaraswamy, Palgrave, 2022; and “The Zionist Center-Left Opposition to the Netanyahu Governments,” in Israel Under Netanyahu: Domestic Politics and Foreign Affairs, ed. Robert Freedman, Routledge, 2019. Dr. Aronoff has published in Foreign Policy, Israel Studies, Israel Studies Review, and Political Science Quarterly, and is on the editorial boards for Israel Studies Review and Israel Studies.

Dr. Noga Morag-Levine is a professor of law and the George Roumell Faculty Scholar at Michigan State University College of Law. Her teaching and research interests include constitutional law, environmental law and history, and comparative law.  She is the author of Chasing the Wind: Regulating Air Pollution in the Common Law State (Princeton University Press, 2003) as well as numerous articles. She holds a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.  In addition to Michigan State, she has been a faculty member or taught courses at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, the Hebrew University Faculty of Law, and the Law Faculty at Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Alon Tal’s  career has been a balance between academia and public interest advocacy.  He is presently a professor at Tel Aviv University where he previously served as chair of the Department of Public Policy.  Between 2021 and 2022, he was member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and served as chair of the subcommittee for Environmental and Climate Impacts on Health. Tal has held faculty appointments at Stanford, Ben Gurion, Hebrew, Michigan State, Otago and Harvard Universities.  He has founded several environmental organizations including the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, the Arava Institute, and Zafuf, the Israel Forum for Population, Environment, and Society. Between 2010 and 2013 Tal served as chair of Israel’s Green Party, “the Green Movement.” His most recent book: Making Climate Tech Work: Policies that Drive Innovation is due out with Island Press in 2024.

Dr. Rami Zeedan is associate professor of Israel Studies in the Jewish Studies program at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on the Arab society in Israel in the context of an ethnic minority in a nation-state while examining several aspects: Arab politics at the national level and integration in the Israeli polity, the status of Arab local governments and local leadership, public opinion, election predictions, and the history of the integration of Arabs in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Dr. Zeedan is the author of several academic articles and two books: The Arab-Palestinian Society in the Israeli Political System: Integration Versus Segregation in the Twenty-First Century. (Lexington Books, 2019) and Battalion of Arabs–The History of the Minorities Unit in the IDF (Modan, 2015, Hebrew). His current research project aims to discover the role of the IDF minorities’ unit in Israel’s wars, mainly the War of 1967 (Six-Day War) and the War of 1973 (Yom Kippur War), and how it helped shape the process of integration of the Druze in Israel’s society.