Visiting Faculty
The Visiting Faculty Program enables faculty with full-time positions at Israeli colleges and universities to participate in one-year teaching exchanges at San Diego Universities. Learn how to apply for a position HERE.
2022-2023 Visiting Faculty & Courses
Ambassador Ido Aharoni (Tel Aviv University and NYU)
The Jean and Gary Shekhter Visiting Professorship
UCSD School of Global Policy and SDSU Business School
Ambassador Aharoni is a 25-year veteran of Israel’s Foreign service, a public diplomacy specialist, and founder of the Brand Israel program. He was Israel’s longest-serving consul-general in New York and the Tri-State area for six years, overseeing the operations of Israel’s largest diplomatic mission worldwide.
Courses:
Diplomacy and Story Telling: the Case of Israel (spring, UCSD)
International Marketing / Nation Branding: Israel as a Case Study (spring, SDSU)
Yuval Gadot (Tel Aviv University)
The Joseph “Chickie” Glickman, z”l Visiting Professorship
UCSD Department of Anthropology
Dr. Gadot is the head of the Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures Department at Tel-Aviv University. Since 2013 he has directed the Tel-Aviv University excavations at the ‘City of David’ and co-directed the “Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition.” His research in Jerusalem includes excavations of the ancient core with interdisciplinary study of the rural landscape surrounding the city.
Courses:
Archaeology’s Role in Building National Narrative: Israel as a Case Study (fall)
Jerusalem, al-Quds, Yerushalim – Complexity of Archaeology in the Holy City (fall)
Yuval Heller (Bar Ilan University)
UCSD Department of Economics
Dr. Heller is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on game theory, especially evolutionary game theory, social learning, bounded rationality, games with pre-play communication, and evolutionary foundations of economic behavior.
Courses:
Economics of Modern Israel (fall and spring)
Topics in Microeconomics, Israel as a Case Study (winter)
Haneen Magadlh (Hebrew University)
The Gloria and Rod Stone Visiting Professorship
SDSU School of Social Work
Dr. Magadlh is a frequent speaker and presenter in academic and social justice forums. She is one of the founders of Salametcom, an organization working to promote volunteerism among Palestinians in Israel. She previously served as the Jerusalem Foundation’s Coordinator of Program Development where she led programs in education, health, welfare and more in East Jerusalem.
Courses:
Social Work Practice Skills, Macro (fall)
Social Work in Organization and Communities (spring)
Mor Shilon (Technion, Israel Institute of Technology)
The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Visiting Professorship
UCSD Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Dr. Shilon’s research investigates the relations between people and technology in complex urban settings. For the last three years, she has developed an innovative multidisciplinary module of an academia-community partnership at Technion, which targets making technology accessible for marginalized communities.
Courses:
A Startup Nation for whom? Hi-tech, Entrepreneurship and Minorities in Israel (fall)
The Design of Social Research: Israel as a Case Study (winter and spring)
Haim Suchowski (Tel Aviv University)
USD Department of Engineering
Dr. Suchowski holds ten published international patents and is an example of an Israeli, high-tech entrepreneur and innovator. He devotes himself to strengthening the relationship between Israeli academia and society, developing young scholars in Israel, and promoting research and scientific excellence.
Course:
How to Succeed in Engineering Innovation: Case Studies from Israel (fall)
Ran Tal (Tel Aviv University)
The Robin and Leo Eisenberg Visiting Professorship
SDSU Screenwriting and CSUSM Art, Media, and Design Department
Ran is a world-renowned director whose documentaries focus on Israeli reality through a historic social perspective. His most current film, “1341 Frames of Love and War” will premier at the Berlin Film Festival this year. Dr. Tal also teaches cinema at Tel Aviv University, where he founded the Masters in Documentary Film, an international program taught in English.
Courses:
Screenwriting (fall, SDSU)
Film Production (fall, CSUSM)
Matan Yair
SDSU Screenwriting and CSUSM Art, Media, and Design Department
Matan is a director and writer. His award-winning, debut feature, Scaffolding was based on his own life experiences and premiered at Cannes in 2017. Dr. Yair studied at the Sam Spiegel School for Film and Television and Tel Aviv University.
Courses:
Screenwriting (fall, SDSU)
Film Production (fall, CSUSM)
Thank you to our university partners in Jewish Studies for their support of the MGSDII Visiting Faculty Program.
2021-2022 Visiting Faculty & Courses
Ori Elon, SDSU, fall semester 2021 (Ma’aleh School of Film and Television)
ENG 577
Techniques of Screenwriting (3 credits)
Wednesday 4:00-6:40pm
Ori is an award-winning writer and creator of several popular Israeli TV shows, including Shtisel, which won 17 Israeli Academy Awards. Currently in its third season on Netflix, Shtisel has become an international sensation. He is also the author of The Invisible Show, a collection of short stories which won the Israeli Ministry of Culture Best Novel Award, and several successful children’s books.
Gilad Halpern, SDSU, spring semester 2021 (University of Haifa)
Gilad is a journalist, broadcaster and media historian. He is the News and Current Affairs Editor at TLV1 Radio, and host of The Tel Aviv Review, a program dedicated to all things intellectual (and Israeli). He is an Idit Fellow at the University of Haifa, researching the history of the Jewish press in Mandatory Palestine. Previously, he was Managing Editor for Ynetnews and Assignments Editor for Haaretz English Edition. His work appeared on the BBC, Al Jazeera, Al Monitor, Time Out magazine, the Jewish Quarterly and the Jewish Chronicle.
Meir Litvak, SDSU, fall semester 2021 (Tel Aviv University)
The Gloria and Rodney Stone Visiting Professorship
HIST 474, fall 2021
History of the Middle East Since 1500 (3 credits)
Tuesday/Thursday 11:00am-12:15pm
HIST 574, fall 2021
Arab-Israeli Relations (3 credits)
Thursday 4:00-6:40pm
Meir serves as a Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern History and a senior research associate at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on modern Islamic movements, particularly Shi’ism, Arab perceptions of the Holocaust and Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1991.
Mor Shilon, UCSD, AY 2021-2022 (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology)
The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Visiting Professorship
Mor earned her PhD from the Technion Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, where she was awarded the Jacobs Scholarship for Academic Excellence. In her research, she investigates the relations between people and technology in complex urban settings. For the last three years, Mor has developed an innovative multidisciplinary module of an academia-community partnership at the Technion which targets making technology accessible for marginalized communities.
Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, SDSU, fall semester 2021 (Tel Aviv University)
ENG 577
Techniques of Screenwriting (3 credits)
Wednesday 4:00-6:40pm
Ronit is the creator and writer of several award-winning TV series, among them the drama A Touch Away and the documentary A Place Under the Sun. Her new series Abducted, an Israeli & Norwegian co-production, premieres on Netflix later this year. Ronit teaches screenwriting at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, works as a book editor with renowned Israeli authors, was one of the founders of the screenwriting program at the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School, and serves as the Israeli Mentor of the 2021 France-Israel co-writing Drama Residency program.
2020-2021 Visiting Faculty & Courses
Mor Shilon, UCSD, AY 2020-2021 (The Gloria and Rodney Stone Visiting Professorship)
USP 189
A Startup Nation for whom? Hi-tech, Entrepreneurship and Minorities in Israel (4 units), winter 2020
TTH 9:30-10:50am
USP 125
The Design of Social Research: Israel as a Case Study (4 units), fall 2020
MFW 11:00-11:50am
Mor is a trained sociologist (M.A.) and an urban planner (PhD), specializing in Israeli cities and their populations. She is currently a professor at Technion University. She will teach at UCSD for the 2020-2021 academic year, using Israeli cities as case studies in her classes. Mor will arrive in August with her husband and two-year-old son.
Nitzan Gilady, SDSU, 2020 Fall Semester (online)
ENG 577
Techniques of Screenwriting (3 credits), fall 2020
Thursday 4:00-6:40pm (Online)
Nitzan is a graduate of the high art school “Thelma Yelin” (Israel) and the Academy of arts “Circle in the Square” (New York). He is director/producer of the documentary films “Jerusalem Is Proud To Present”, “In Satmar Custody” and “The Last Enemy”. His films have received 13 international awards, participated in over 120 international film festivals and broadcast in prestigious TV channels over the world (among them are: Sundance channel and ZDF-ARTE). His TV work includes: “Singing To Oblivion – The Story of Miri Aloni”, “Do Not Call Me Black 2008” and “Dark southern deal”. The short fiction drama “Queens up” directed by Gilady has participated at the international Jerusalem Film Festival and received an Audience award at Sedicicorto – Forli International film festival. He is currently working on his next feature length film.
Haim Suchowski, USD, 2021 Spring Semester (online)
Haim Suchowski is a professor at Tel Aviv University. He will teach “Innovations in Israel” at USD via zoom, while teaching the same class at Tel Aviv University. This collaborative teaching program will connect professors and classes in San Diego and Tel Aviv. As the holder of ten published international patents, Suchowski is a perfect example of high-tech entrepreneurship and innovation in Israel. Haim devotes himself to strengthening the relationship between Israeli academia and society, developing young scholars in Israel, and promoting research and scientific excellence.
2019-2020 Visiting Faculty & Courses
Shuki Ben Naim, SDSU, 2019 Fall Semester
ENG 577
Techniques of Screenwriting (3 credits), fall 2019
Shuki is an Israeli television creator and screenwriter. He is a graduate of the Utniel Yeshiva and the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, where he majored in screenwriting. He is known for his hit Israeli television series “Nuyork,” “Urim VeTumim,” “Giora’s Wife,” and “A Touch Away”. He is regarded for his innovative social media productions including ones streamed on Soda Stream. Shuki is one of the writers for the HBO series “Our Boys,” which premiered August 2019.
Eran Feitelson, SDSU, 2019 Fall Semester
GEOG-370
Conservation Science and Policy – Israel (3 credits), fall 2019
Eran is a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A previous chair of the Department of Geography, he was head of the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government from 2004 to 2009. Currently, he is head of the new Advanced School for Environmental Studies. He has published extensively on environmental policy, transport policy, environmental planning, and water policy issues. In addition to his academic work, Eran Feitelson has participated in several national and regional planning teams in Israel and has been a member of many national committees. He has also served as chair of the Israeli Nature Reserves and National Parks Commission for ten years. He holds an MA in geography and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University.
Nitzan Gilady, CSUSM, 2020 Spring Semester
Nitzan is a graduate of the high art school “Thelma Yelin” (Israel) and the Academy of arts “Circle in the Square” (New York). He is director/producer of the documentary films “Jerusalem Is Proud To Present”, “In Satmar Custody” and “The Last Enemy”. His films have received 13 international awards, participated in over 120 international film festivals and broadcast in prestigious TV channels over the world (among them are: Sundance channel and ZDF-ARTE). His TV work includes: “Singing To Oblivion – The Story of Miri Aloni”, “Do Not Call Me Black 2008” and “Dark southern deal”. The short fiction drama “Queens up” directed by Gilady has participated at the international Jerusalem Film Festival and received an Audience award at Sedicicorto – Forli International film festival. He is currently working on his next feature length film.
Luba Levin-Banchick, San Diego State University, AY 2019-2020 (The Gloria and Rod Stone Visiting Professorship)
POL S-322
Politics and Conflict – Israel (3 credits), fall 2019
HIST-574
Arab-Israeli Relations (3 credits), fall 2019
Luba Levin-Banchick (Bar-Ilan University) is a political scientist and historian, studying the evolution of conflict and peace in contemporary international relations of the Middle East. Her expertise is in the field of global and regional security, international crisis escalation and recurrence, domestic and transnational terrorism, cooperation and violence between rivalries, and nonstate actors. In 2017, she won the Teaching with Impact Best Syllabus prize from the Israel Institute for the course she developed on “Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Israel.”
Jay Rothman, UC San Diego, 2019 Fall Quarter
GPGN 490
Politics of Peace – Israel (4 credits), fall 2019
INTL 102
History and Politics of Israeli-Palestinian: Peace-Seeking from the Inside-Out, (4 credits), winter and spring 2020
Jay Rothman is a scholar-practitioner of creative conflict engagement. He is the conductor of the ARIA Group, Inc. which supports individuals, groups, organizations and nations engage identity-based conflict creatively. He spent the last seven years teaching and guiding action research projects in Arab-Jewish relations within Israel and between Israelis and Palestinians in the City of Jerusalem. Rothman is the author of dozens of journal articles about conflict resolution and participatory evaluation, and five books, including, most recently, Rothman, J. (2018). Re-Envisioning Conflict Resolution: Vision, Action and Evaluation in Creative Conflict Engagement. London: Routledge. He has trained, facilitated and mediated internationally for several decades, led workshops and given keynote presentations at numerous conferences and convocations in more than a dozen countries.
Shimon Shetreet, UC San Diego, 2019 Fall Quarter
INTL 190, Section B00
Governance and National Policy in Israel (4 credits), fall 2019
Shimon Shetreet is a Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He holds the Greenblatt chair of public and international law and is the head of the Sacher Institute of Legislative Research and Comparative Law. He has held high public offices. Between 1988 and 1996 he served as Member of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. His past government positions included a cabinet Minister where he served as Minister of Economy and Planning, Minister of Science and Technology, and Minister of Religious Affairs. In addition to his distinguished academic career and his public offices, he also held high business positions including member of the board of Bank Leumi and Chairman of the Board of Mishaan.
Marik Shtern, UC San Diego, AY 2019-2020 (The Joseph Glickman, z”l, Visiting Professorship)
USP 189
Special Topics in Urban Planning – Jerusalem, A City in Conflict (4 credits), fall 2019
SOCI 159
Jerusalem:Communities and Conflict (4 credits), winter 2020
Marik Shtern (Ben Gurion University) is a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, where his field of research is the geography of Jewish-Arab relations in Jerusalem. He specializes in the sphere of community empowerment and strategic consulting for third sector organizations (civil society) in the fields of social and political change in Jerusalem.
Gilad Shtienberg, UC San Diego and SDSU, AY 2019-2020
ANAR 116
Sea Level Change – Israel (4 credits), fall 2019
Gilad Shtienberg (University of Haifa) studies long-term climate change in Israel and neighboring lands as a model for more general issues of global environmental change. He specializes in the understanding theoretical and practical aspects of the landscape changes that occur in the dynamic environments of the coast zone. His recent projects focus on human settlement during the Biblical periods along Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast.
Moshe Zonder, SDSU, 2019 Fall Semester
ENG 577
Techniques of Screenwriting (3 credits), fall 2019
Moshe was the head writer for Fauda, the enormously successful television series broadcast in Israel. In 2016, Fauda became the first Israeli series to be released as a Netflix Original. He has written many other screenplays for film and television, most recently for a documentary on the 1972 hijacking of a Sabena Airways flight bound for Israel. He began his career as a journalist working at Maariv, one of Israel’s leading Hebrew-language daily newspapers.
2018-2019 Visiting Faculty & Courses
Erez Ben-Yosef, UC San Diego, AY 2018-2019
Erez Ben-Yosef (Tel Aviv University) is a professor in the department of archaeology and the graduate program in archaeology and archaeomaterials at Tel Aviv University. He is best known for leading 21st century digs at the ancient copper mines in Israel’s Timna Valley where he made new discoveries concerning the mystery of King Solomon’s Mines. An article on his findings was recently published in National Geographic.
UCSD Classes:
• Past, Present and Future Perspectives on Natural Resources in Israel, fall 2018
• Archaeology’s Role in Building National Narrative: Israel as a Case Study, winter 2019
• Environmental Hazards in Israel, spring 2019
Yehuda Goodman, UC San Diego, AY 2018-2019 (The Gloria and Rod Stone Visiting Professorship)
Yehuda Goodman (Hebrew University) is a professor in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His fields of interest are psychological anthropology, medical anthropology, and anthropology of religion. His research focus is on the ways identities are formed, manufactured and negotiated in the contexts of social and political contestations. Most recently, he has studied Jewish conversion issues among Russian and Ethiopian immigrants in Israel.
UCSD Classes:
• Graduate Seminar, fall 2018
• State, Nation-building, and Healthcare in Israel, winter 2019
• The Anthropology of Mental Health in Israel and the Diaspora, spring 2019
Gilad Shtienberg, UC San Diego, AY 2018-2019
Gilad Shtienberg (University of Haifa) studies long-term climate change in Israel and neighboring lands as a model for more general issues of global environmental change. He specializes in the understanding theoretical and practical aspects of the landscape changes that occur in the dynamic environments of the coast zone. His recent projects focus on human settlement during the Biblical periods along Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast.
UCSD Classes:
• Special Topics in Anthropological Archaeology, fall 2018
• Sea Level Change: The Israel Case in World Perspective, winter 2019
• Coastal Geomorphology and Environmental Change, spring 2019
Marik Shtern, UC San Diego, Winter 2018-Spring 2019 (The Joseph Glickman, z”l, Visiting Professorship)
Marik Shtern, Post-Doctoral Fellow (Ben Gurion University) is a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, where his field of research is the geography of Jewish-Arab relations in Jerusalem. He specializes in the sphere of community empowerment and strategic consulting for third sector organizations (civil society) in the fields of social and political change in Jerusalem.
UCSD Classes:
• Special Topics: Communities and Conflict in Jerusalem, winter 2019
• Urban Sociology: The Case of Israel, spring 2019
Luba Levin-Banchick, San Diego State University, AY 2018-2019
Luba Levin-Banchick (Bar-Ilan University) is a political scientist and historian, studying the evolution of conflict and peace in contemporary international relations of the Middle East. Her expertise is in the field of global and regional security, international crisis escalation and recurrence, domestic and transnational terrorism, cooperation and violence between rivalries, and nonstate actors. In 2017, she won the Teaching with Impact Best Syllabus prize from the Israel Institute for the course she developed on “Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Israel.”
SDSU Classes:
• Arab-Israeli Relations, Past and Present, winter 2018
• Politics and Conflict in the Middle East, spring 2019
Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, San Diego State University, Spring 2019
Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz (Tel Aviv University) teaches screenwriting at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and is one of the founders of the Screenwriting Program at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. She has been a writer on several television series, directed documentaries and also served as a script editor on two series. She is well known in Israel for the drama “A Touch Away” and the documentary,” A Place Under the Sun.” She was Editor-in-Chief at Keter Publishing House, one of the largest publishers in Israel, and has edited books by celebrated writers, including Amoz Oz, Shemi Zarhin, and Nava Semel.
SDSU Class:
• The Techniques of Screenwriting, spring 2019
2017-2018 Visiting Faculty
Tamar Arieli, San Diego State University, AY 2017-2018
Tamar Arieli is the Head of the Conflict Management Program at the Tel-Hai College, Israel. She formerly served as a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (IDC) and at Indiana University, Bloomington (2010-2011). Arieli’s academic background combines political geography, regional and urban planning with the study of conflict and cooperation. She analyzes economic, social, and environmental aspects of life in border and peripheral regions, where social and political conflict may compromise prospects of regional development and social integration. Her past research involved extensive field work in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza strip as well as along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Nir Bergman, San Diego State University, Fall 2017
Nir Bergman is one of Israel’s most acclaimed directors. His feature films have won awards at some of the most prestigious international festivals. His film “Broken Wings” won the Best Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Best Debut Feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival Panorama Audience Award. It also won the Israel Academy Awards Prize for the Best Director, Screenplay, Picture, Cinematography, Actress and Supporting Actress. “Broken Wings” has been distributed in the U.S.A, England, Germany, Mexico, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Greece Romania and others.
Adi Hercowitz-Amir UC San Diego, AY 2017-2018
Adi Hercowitz-Amir received her PhD in Sociology from The University of Haifa, Israel in August 2017. Her PhD dissertation focuses on reception of asylum seekers and refugees. She holds a B.A. degree in Sociology and Anthropology, Communication and Journalism from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an M.A. degree in Sociology and Anthropology, majoring in Organizational Studies from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Morad Elsana, California Western School of Law, AY 2017-2018
Morad Elsana earned his S.J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law. Previously, he served as Staff Attorney and Director at the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Adalah, Israel (Negev Office) (2011-2009). Elsana specializes in international and comparative law and human rights, and recent publications include “The Recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Land: Application for the Customary Land Rights Model on the Arab-Bedouin Case in Israel” (Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives, 2015)
David Ofek, San Diego State University, Fall 2017
David Ofek is a renowned writer and director. His feature-length documentary “No. 17” was featured in MoMA’s New Directors/New Films series and has been screened at over 80 international festivals. Among his other famous works are the TV mini-series “Melanoma My Love,” a poignant and revealing portrait of a man who loses his wife to cancer; “The Ulpan” (A Hebrew Lesson), a thought-provoking look at the problems of several immigrant students in a Hebrew language ulpan; and “Nicolai and the Law of Return,” which was awarded Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2008. Bergman and Ofek will be team teaching a Screenwriting class in Fall 2017 in the English department.
2016-2017 Visiting Faculty
Oded Brosch, San Diego State University, Winter and Spring 2017
Oded Brosh is a political scientist from IDC Herzliya who specializes in security studies, specifically nuclear politics, strategy, deterrence, proliferation, and related WMD issues. A Senior Research Fellow at IDC Herzliya’s Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS), he is the author of “IAEA 26 February 2016 Iran Inspection Report Summary” (IPS Publications, 2016) and “Iran in 2025: Four Scenarios” (IPS Publications, 2015).
Dana Ivgy, San Diego State University, Spring 2017
Ivgy starred most recently in “Zero Motivation,” which won Best Narrative Feature and the Nora Ephron Prize at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and for which she received a Best Actress Award (her second) from the Israel Film Academy. Variety cites her acting as “so natural, it’s hard to believe it’s even a performance.” For 10 years, she has also been performing internationally with the Israeli stage comedy troupe Tziporela, for which she serves as artistic director. She will be a Schusterman Visiting Israel Artist at San Diego State University from January 15 to May 5, 2017.
Adi Shany, UC San Diego, Doctoral Fellow
Shany earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Specializing in the economics of education and human resources, her recent publications include “Out of Africa: Human Capital Consequences of In Utero Conditions” (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers, 2016 – with Victor Lavy and Analia Schlosser).
Matthew Nanes, UC San Diego, Doctoral Fellow
Discipline: Political Science
Nanes’ dissertation examines the effects of ethnic and religious inclusiveness in the police and domestic security forces in divided societies.