Present Position

Department of Communication
Director of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Center for the Media of the Jewish People
Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel.
Tel: 972-3-6408665
Fax: 972-3-6422318
E-mail: mkeren@post.tau.ac.il

Biographical Data

Prof. Michael Keren was born in Jerusalem in1944. He completed his B.A. in philosophy and political science at the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Minnesota. He joined Tel-Aviv University's department of political science in 1975, and between 1994 and 1996 served as its chair. His major fields are political philosophy and political communication.

Professor Keren has served as Director of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute and Archives and as an expert on behalf of the United Nations Development Program in South America. He has lectured in many universities in North America, Europe and Asia.

Selected Publications

Books

Zichroni vs. State of Israel : The Biography of a Civil Rights Lawyer. Lanham, MD : Lexington Books - forthcoming.

Political Literature in the Twentieth Century, Tel-Aviv: Misrad Habita'hon, 1999. (In Hebrew).

Professionals against Populism: The Peres Government and Democracy, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995.

The Pen and the Sword: Israeli Intellectuals and the Making of the Nation-State, Boulder: Westview, 1989.

Ben-Gurion and the Intellectuals: Power, Knowledge and Charisma , DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983.

Eight Characters in Search of Civility
(Under review).

Edited books

(With Don Sylvan) Dilemmas of International Intervention : Sovereignty vs. Responsibility. London: Frank Cass, 2001.

History of Political Ideas (two volumes). Tel-Aviv: Open University Press, 2001. (In Hebrew).

The Concentration of Media Ownership and Freedom of the Press, Tel Aviv: Ramot, 1996.

Recent Monographs

(With Gad Barzilai) "The Integration of 'Peripheral' Groups in Israeli Society in an Era
of Peace". Israel Institute of Democracy, 1998. (In Hebrew).

Recent Articles

"Political Perfectionism and 'Anti-System' Behavior," Party Politics 6 (January 2000): 83 - 92

"Biography and Historiography: The Case of David Ben-Gurion," Biography 23 (Spring 2000): 332-351.

"The Woman Magazine and Civil Society in the 1920s." Kesher 28 (November 2000): 28 - 35. (In Hebrew)

"Legal Professionals and Civil Disobedience: An Israeli Case Study". International Journal of the Legal Profession 6 (1999): 91 - 108.

"The Civil Society and its Enemies: The Case of Israel". Review of Constitutional Studies (October 1999): 34 - 52.

"Ha'olam Haze: Ideology and Politics". Kesher 25 (May 1999): 63 - 70. (In Hebrew).

"Justifications of Conscientious Objection: An Israeli Case Study". International Journal of the Sociology of Law 26 (March 1998): 121 - 137.

"Intellectual Discourse in Israel: George Steiner's 'Our Homeland the Text' Revisited". Israel Affairs 3 (Winter 1997): 1 - 11.

"Elections 1996: The Candidates and the 'New Politics'." Israel Affairs 4 (Autumn 1997): 258 - 271.

Recent Chapters in Books

"Intellectuals without Borders". In Dilemmas of International Intervention : Sovereignty vs. Responsibility. Michael Keren and Don Sylvan eds., London: Frank Cass, 2001.

"The Press and Civil Society in Israel". In Israel at 50, Robert O Freedman ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. "Israel's Security Intellectuals". In Daniel Bar-Tal, Dan Jacobson and Aharon Klieman eds., Security Concerns: Insights from the Israeli Experience, Stamford, Conn.: JAI Press, (1999): 181 - 192.

"Elections 1996: The Candidates and the New Politics". In The Israeli elections 1996, Daniel Elazar and Shmuel Sandler eds. London: Frank Cass, 1998, 258 - 272.

"Martin Buber's Impact on political Dialogue in Israel". In Martin Buber and the Human Sciences, Maurice Friedman, ed., State University of New York Press, 1996, 283 - 294.