Experts

served as the first director-general of Kadima and as one of its Knesset members from 2007 to 2013.

Jesse Ferris joined IDI in the fall of 2008 as Vice President of Strategy. His responsibilities include international programming and development. Jesse received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2008. His research interests include democracy and foreign policy, international politics of the Middle East, and Israeli national security.

Vice President of Research at the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, and the Center for Security and Democracy

Prof. Shany's research interests include; international courts, human rights, laws of war, cyberlaw, and legal aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is former dean of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds the Hersch Lauterpach Chair in International Public Law. In 2018, he became a Chairman of the UN Human Rights Committee..​

the former head of the migration research unit at Aharon Meir Center for Banking and Economic Policy at Bar-Ilan University and the former director of the economic research division at the Manufacturers Association of Israel (MAI).

 

A member of the Faculty of Law of the Peres Academic Center, Dr. Shuki Friedman served as secretary of the Locker Committee for Examining the Defense Budget, chairman of the government committee on the sanctions against Iran, and head of the international and foreign law department for the legal division of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

Vinograd led legal battles to increase public transparency and battled against corruption in various issues including education, health, transportation and more. She has more than a decade of experience in the social sector, and in 2015 she was awarded the Rappaport Prize for Women Generating Change in Israeli Society.

 

Admiral (Res.) Ami Ayalon is a former director of the Shin Bet, commander of the Israeli Navy, government minister and member of Knesset.

Eli Bahar holds an MA in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and teaches courses in the Law Department of Tel Aviv University. He served as the legal advisor to the Shin Bet from 2006 to 2011.

 

 

Professor Amichai Cohen is a member of the Faculty of Law at Ono Academic College. He earned his LL.B. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his LL.M. and LL.D. from Yale Law School at Yale University.

Professor Yuval Feldman is a full professor on the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University and a former fellow of Institutional Corruption Lab at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

Talia Fisher is a professor and has served as Assistant Dean for Research at the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on the theory of evidence. In addition, it deals with the question of the limits of the market, with an emphasis on the private supply of legal institutions. Talia was a research fellow at the Harvard Law School and a researcher at Harvard University's Edmond Safra Center for Ethics.

Dr. Amir Fuchs holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a lecturer in the Politics and Communication Department at the School of Government and Social Sciences at Hadassah Academic College.

A faculty member of the Political Science Department at the Open University of Israel, Professor Tamar Hermann has co-edited the monthly Peace Index (with Professor Ephraim Ya’ar) since 1994, and has edited the annual Israeli Democracy Index since 2010.

Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya holds an MA in education and social geography and is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at Tel Aviv University. The topic of her doctoral dissertation is, “The contemporary impact of social space barriers on the inaction and future orientation of young Arabs aged 18–22.”

Professor Kremnitzer is a professor emeritus of the Faculty of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, former dean of the Faculty of Law, and director of the Israeli Press Council.

Dean of the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University, is considered a leading scholar of family law and responsible for shaping civil law theory in that field.

Co-author of the Master Plan for Ultra-Orthodox Employment (along with Doron Cohen and Haim Zicherman) and editor of the Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel (in copperation with Dr. Lee Cahaner and Dr. Maya Choshen). He was director of implementation of the Gabison-Meidan Covenant Project at the Avi Chai Foundation and content manager of the Committee on Sharing the Security Burden in the Eighteenth Knesset.

 

Professor Margalit headed a large, experimental cross-national study of the investment decisions of multinational firms, a project that he developed and carried out in collaboration with the World Bank and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

Professor Rahat is a faculty member of the Political Sciences Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an International Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine.

A board member of the National Press Council and lecturer at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University. She is a former head of the research department at the Israeli Second Authority for Television and Radio, a former research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Professor Yedidia Z. Stern is a Senior Fellow, Center for Religion Nation and State; Academic Director, Human Rights and Judaism Program.

He holds a master's degree in sociology and anthropology from Bar-Ilan University. He is currently in the final stages of his Ph.D. on New masculinity, father involvement and family-work interface, in the Department of Sociology at Bar-Ilan University.

Dr. Hadar Arditi-Babchuk has a doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Program in Brain Sciences at Bar-Ilan University and a master's degree in Epidemiology from Tel-Aviv University.

Adv. Rachel Aridor Hershkovitz is a researcher in the Israel Democracy Institute’s Media Reform program and a research fellow at the Haifa Center for Law and Technology at the University of Haifa.

An expert on ultra-Orthodox Judaism and its religious formation. The author of the book The Chazon Ish, Brown did his post-doctoral work at Harvard University.

A social geographer and the head of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department, and a senior lecturer in the Geography and Environmental Studies Department at Oranim Academic College of Education.

Brig. Gen. (res) Moni Chorev served in the IDF as a division commander, commander of the Givati Brigade and commander of the IDF's Officers' Training School.

Dr. Will Cubbison is a graduate of George Washington University. His research focused on political behavior, including vote choice, voter turnout, and black voter registration during Jim Crow. Prior to making Aliyah he worked for political campaigns in the United States.

 

Dr. Chen Friedberg has co-written many papers published by the Israel Democracy Institute.

Researcher, Human Rights and Judaism Program

Dr. Eliezer Hadad is the coordinator of the MA program in Biblical Studies at Herzog College and a lecturer in Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Relationship between Nature and the Torah in Maimonides’ Writings, as well as the policy papers Minorities in the Jewish State and The Status of Women in the Rabbinical Courts.

Areas of expertise

The principle of equality in the Jewish sources; Maimonidean philosophy; Jewish philosophy.

Researcher at the Center for Religion, Nation and State

Dr. Isaac Hershkowitz, who engages in thorough analyses of rabbinic literature in general and halakhic literature in particular, integrates advanced methods of Jewish studies and sociology in his work.

A senior lecturer in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Bar-Ilan University, an MA advisor in the department, and acting head of the organizational consulting project.

 

Dr. Guy Lurie is a lawyer and received his PhD in History from Georgetown University (2013). Dr. Lurie is a former coordinator of the Shamgar Commission for the Formulation of Rules of Ethics for Members of the Government, and served as a post-doctoral fellow on the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa.

Marina Motsenok is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her BA in sociology and education and her MA in organizational sociology from the Hebrew University.

Mr. Rudnitzky is a PhD student who has been researching Arab Israeli issues for more than a decade. His fields of expertise cover political, national and social developments in Israel's Arab society; Jewish-Arab relations; and government policies on Arabs in Israel. Rudnitzky holds MA (magna cum laude) and BA degrees in Middle Eastern History from the Faculty of Humanities and an MBA degree from the Faculty of Management, both at Tel Aviv University. 

Adv. Oded Ron holds an LL.M. from the Human Rights Cathedral at College of Management Academic Studies and LL.B. from the Faculty of Law at the Bar-Ilan University
Interned at the legal department at ACRI: Association for Civil Rights Israel

Researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute. Senior lecturer in the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A senior lecturer on the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the director of the Matz Institute for Jewish Law. After completing his doctorate at the Hebrew University, he was hosted as a post-doctoral fellow by the University of Toronto

Dr. Eitan Regev is an economist and a Research Fellow at Israel Democracy Institute. He is regarded as one of the leading experts in research of the Ultra-Orthodox economy in Israel. Dr. Regev's research encompasses a variety of fields, including labor productivity, the Haredi economy, the cost of living, food insecurity, and the Israeli health system. 

Professor Ilana Ritov of the School of Education at Hebrew University of Jerusalem is a consultant for IDI's Proportionality in Public Policy Project. She serves as a resource for the project's research team on issues of decision making and cognitive biases.

Adv. Lina Saba-Habesch holds an LL.M. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a doctoral candidate in the joint interdisciplinary program of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and the Free University of Berlin. The topic of her doctoral dissertation is the "Torture of security suspects."

 

A Post-doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Law at Tel-Aviv University, Idit Shafran Gittleman holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Haifa.

Assaf Shapira received a PhD in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at the Centre d’études européennes (Center for European Studies) at the Sciences po (Paris). His research largely focuses on political representation, political parties, the role of money in politics, and reforms in Israel's public service.

A researcher, journalist, author, and publicist, Yair Sheleg has been an astute observer of the religious-Zionist world for many years.

The topics of Dr. Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan’s studies are the politics of investigative committees, the effect of reputation on government agencies, the judicial proportionality of experts, and the effect of corruption in the public sector and the resulting judicial intervention on voter behavior.

Dr. Raphael Ventura is the director of the data archive of the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Dr. Moran Yarchi received her Ph.D. in 2012 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a senior lecturer at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya.

Research Assistant, Political Reform Program

IDI Researcher Prof. Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler explores questions of immigration, asylum, and citizenship as part of IDI's Democratic Principles project. He is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading.