Lecturers
Alexandre Adler
Historian and adviser of the editorial board of the FIGARO.He previously served as Associate editorial chronicler on channel Direct 8, adviser of the editorial board of the Figaro, associate editorial writer for Le Monde, editorial director of the weekly Courrier International, presenter of the weekly documentary Les Mercredis de l’histoire (historical recalling) on Arte, columnist and editorial committee member of the monthly Histoire, columnist of the monthly L’Expansion, directing committee deputy member of the Association des anciens auditeurs de l’Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN), of the Club Confrontation and of the Union Liberale Israélite in France. He was directing committee member of the quarterly Crises (since 1994), and sponsorship committee member for l’observatoire de l’extrémisme (since 1998). He is also presenter (with Jean-Marie Colombani, director of Le Monde) of the weekly program La Rumeur du Monde on France Culture
His works include Rendez-vous avec l’Islam (Grasset 2005), Pour l’Amour du peuple, un officier de la Stasi parle (Albin Michel 1999), Le Communism (Que sais-je? 2001), J’ai vu finir le monde ancien (Grasset 2002), Au fil des jours cruels: 1992 – 2002 - Chroniques (Grasset 2003), L’Odyssée américaine (Grasset & Fasqualle 2004) , Le rapport de la CIA (Robert Laffont 2006), and Sociétés secrètes (Grasset 2007). He was nominated Chevalier dans l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur (2002) and in 1999 he received Prize of the Fundation Mumm for his work in Courrier International.
Ami Bouganim
Born in 1951 in Mogador (Morocco), Ami Bouganim graduated at the Hebrew University. He is a writer, a philosopher and a teacher. Ami Bouganim is the author of novels, including Le Charmeur de mouettes – “The Charmer of gulls” (La Chambre d’Echo, 2005) and of essays, including Walter Benjamin, le rêve de vivre -“Walter Benjamin, the dream of living”- (Albin Michel, 2007). Ami Bouganim had lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and he currently leads the Research and Development Institute of the Education Department of the Jewish Agency. Ami Bouganim is achieving an essay on spiritualities within the religions.
Ayşe Selçuk Esenbel
Graduated from George Washington (1968), and International Christian University (BA), she received a MS from Georgetown University in 1971 and a Ph. D. at Columbia University in 1981.She held the Chair of the Department of History, Bogazici University from 1994 to 2003. Since 2005, she’s been East Asian Studies Coordinator in this University. AyseSelçuk Esenbel is the Founder of the Japanese and Chinese Language Programs in the Bogazici University.
Among her publications are Even the Gods Rebel: The Peasants of Takaino and the 1871 Nakano Uprising; Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam; and with Inaba Chiharu, The Rising Sun and the Turkish Crescent: New Perspectives on Japanese-Turkish Relations, 2003.
Efraim Halevy
Born in 1934, emigrated to pre-state Yishuv in April 1948. Ambassador Halevy currently serves as Head of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University's School of Public Policy. Hebrew University Faculty of Law 1952-1956, graduated M. Juris (cum laude); President, National Union of Israeli Students 1955-1957; senior staff officer (civilian status), Israel Defense Forces 1957-1961; political commentator, IDF radio station 1960-1961; served in the Mossad 1961-1995; Political Counselor, Israel Embassy, Washington DC (under Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin) 1970-1974; Political Counselor, Israel Embassy, Paris 1976-1979; Division Chief, Mossad 1980-1995; Deputy Director of the Mossad 1990-1995; Israel Ambassador to the European Union, Brussels 1996-1998; Head of the Mossad 1998-2002; Head of the National Security Council and National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister (Ariel Sharon) 2002-2003.
Amb. Halevy served as a personal and secret envoy of five successive prime ministers to heads of state, prime ministers and key political figures over a period of 18 years (1985-2003).
Om Prakash Jain
Born on 5th January 1929 into an old and eminent business family of Delhi, O.P. Jain has been deeply involved in the civic, social and cultural life of the city. For nearly three decades he has devoted himself to preservation and nurturing of India’s cultural heritage. In 1979 he established the Sanskriti Pratishthan, dedicated to cultural preservation and promotion.
Mr. Jain was responsible for restoration of the 15th century Neemrana Fort-Palace in Rajasthan in 1986, a work cited as an exemplary conservation effort in the non-government sector. He became the Convenor of INTACH, Delhi Chapter (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) and has initiated many activities and projects.
In his role as a catalyst and promoter, O.P. Jain has helped artists and cultural institutions to grow according to their own perspectives and capacities. His dynamic vision and continuing commitment to the arts and culture has emerged as a model for institution building. Mr Jain has been a promoter and a conservationist who contributed significantly to the cultural and civic life of the whole of India. In January 2003, Mr Jain was honored with the Padma Shree, one of the highest civilian awards.
Éric Marié
Professor Éric Marié was born in 1960 in Nancy (France). Since early age he was fond of traditional medicines and particularly of Chinese medicine which he has been investigating for thirty years. Mainly trained in the Far East (China, Taiwan, Japan), he deepened his knowledge in attending Chinese universities and hospitals and by following traditional doctors in their everyday life, sharing their experience, while becoming familiar with various aspects of the Far Eastern culture.
Doctor of Chinese medicine (Nanchang, China) and holder of a Ph.D. of the School of High Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris, France), Éric Marié became professor in 1992. A few years later, he headed a research unit of the Faculty of Chinese Medicine in Jiangxi. His researches and lectures took place in various universities and in European and Chinese institutions. In France, he was lecturer, then professor in several universities. Since 2004, he has been teaching and leading research works on history and epistemology of Chinese medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Lausanne.
Since 2005, he has held the Chiang Ching Kuo Chair of Chinese studies of the University of Louvain and taught Chinese medicine and pharmacology. Since January 2008, Professor Éric Marié heads the department of Chinese studies of the ICES, while pursuing a scientific collaboration with the universities of Louvain and Lausanne.
Helmut Oswald Maucher
Helmut Oswald Maucher was born in Germany in 1927.After graduating from high school, completed a commercial apprenticeship at the Nestlé factory in Eisenharz (Germany), and was then transferred to Nestlé in Frankfurt. Parallel to holding different positions within the Company, he studied at Frankfurt University, where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration ("Diplom-Kaufmann").
From 1964 until 1980, he held different management positions within the Nestlé Company in Germany and, from 1975 on, became President and Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé-Gruppe Deutschland, Frankfurt. Finally, on 1st October, 1980, he was transfered to Nestlé in Switzerland as Executive Vice President of Nestlé S.A., Vevey, and Member of the Executive Committee.
In November 1981, he has been nominated as Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé S.A. and from 1st June, 1990 to 5th June, 1997 he was both Chairman of the Board and CEO. As of 6th June, 1997, having relinquished the position of Chief Executive Officer, he continued as Chairman of the Board of Nestlé S.A., Vevey Switzerland. On 25th May, 2000, he relinquished the position of Chairman of the Board; and was named Honorary Chairman by the Board.
Mr. Maucher is Member of boards of directors and other institutions: Chairman of the Board of Trustees, "Stiftung Demoskopie Allensbach", Germany; Member of the Board of Trustees, “Universität Bayern e.V.”, Munich; Chairman of the Board of Trustees, “Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies” (FIAS)
Books: "Leadership in Action" (translated from German – "Marketing ist Chefsache" – into several languages); “Management Breviary” (translated from German - “Management Brevier” - into English)
Yuri Pines
Yuri Pines was born in Kiev Ukraine (former U.S.S.R.) in 1964. He immigrated to Israel in 1979. In 1998, he graduated PhD, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of East Asian Studies. In 1998, he was Lecturer (2002- Senior Lecturer), at the Hebrew University, Department of East Asian Studies. In 2004-2005 and 2007, he holds a Chair, at the Department of East Asian Studies, of the Hebrew University.
His fields of interest and research are ancient Chinese political thought; traditional Chinese political culture; Chinese historiography; social and political history of pre-imperial and early imperial China.
His major publications are Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life inthe Chunqiu Period, 722-453 B.C.E. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002); Envisioning Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Period (453-221 B.C.E.) (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming, 2008); Kol Asher mi-takhat le-shamaim: Sin Ha-Keisarit (All under Heaven: Imperial China [in Hebrew]), co-authored and co-edited with Yitzhak Shichor (chief editor) and Gideon Shelach. Tel-Aviv: The Open University Press (forthcoming). In addition, he published over 40 articles on different aspects of early Chinese history, historiography, religion, ancient Chinese thought and traditional Chinese political culture.
Jyotirmaya Sharma
Jyotirmaya Sharma is professor of political science at Hyderabad University, India. His recent publications include, Hindutva : Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism (Penguin/Viking, 2003) and Terrifying Vision : M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS and India (Penguin/Viking, 2007). He is currently working on the thought of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Tagore and Gandhi (to be published by Penguin/Viking in 2009), while simultaneously working on a book exploring the life and ideas of Gandhi. He has been a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and has lectured at the universities of Baroda, Hull, Oxford, and the St. Stephens College, Delhi. He was visiting professor in democratic theory at the South Asia Institute at Ruprecht-Karls University at Heidelberg in 2005. Professor Sharma also held senior editorial positions at the Times of India and The Hindu between 1998-2006. He is a trained Hindustani classical musician.
Ben-Ami Shillony
Ben-Ami Shillony is Professor Emeritus of East Asian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was born in Poland in 1937 and immigrated to Israel in 1948. After receiving his Master degree in history from the Hebrew University in 1965, he studied for two years Japanese language at the International Christian University in Tokyo, and then went to Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in Japanese history.
In 1971 he returned to Israel and taught at the Hebrew University until his retirement in 2006. He also taught and did research at the universities of Colorado, Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, Harvard, and Tokyo. He was twice awarded the Michael Milken Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In 2000 the Emperor of Japan bestowed on him the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star (Kun-nitō Zuihōshō).
In 2007 an international conference was held in his honor at the Hebrew University. His books in Hebrew on Japanese history and culture are the standard textbooks on Japan in Israel. His books in English are: Revolt in Japan(Princeton University Press, 1973), Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Clarendon Press, 1981), The Jews and the Japanese (Tuttle, 1992), Collected Writings of Ben-Ami Shillony(Curzon Press, 2000), and Enigma of the Emperors (Global Oriental, 2005).
David Shulman
David Shulman was born in 1949 in the USA, emigrated to Israel in 1967. B.A. Hebrew University (Islamic History), 1971. Ph.D. University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976. A specialist in South Indian philology and cultural history, with research interests in Tamil language and literature, Telugu language and literature, Sanskrit poetics, South Indian Islam, and the history of religion in South India.
Publications include: Tamil Temple Myths (1980); The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (1985); Textures of Time: Writing History in South India (with Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Velcheru Narayana Rao: Paris, Seuil 2001); A Poem at the Right Moment (with Velcheru Narayana Rao, 1998); The Wisdom of Poets: Studies in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit (2001).
David Shulman chaired the Institute of African and Asiatic Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a professor of Humanities in the Department of the compared religions at HUJ. He was MacArthur Fellow (1987-1992), received Rothschild Prize (2004) and is member of the Israeli Academy (Regional education authority) of the Sciences and the humanities since 1988. His deeper passions are Hindustani and Carnatic music.
Vera Schwarcz
Born in Romania, Vera Schwarcz holds the Freeman Chair in East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in CT., USA. She is the author of seven books, including the prize-winning Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory (Yale University Press, 1999) as well as Time for Telling Truth Is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu (Yale, 1986) ; The Chinese Enlightenment (Berkeley, 1984) and Place and Memory in Singing Crane Garden (forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press). She is also the author of two books of poetry A Scoop of Light and In The Garden of Memory, a collaboration with Israeli artist Chava Pressburger. Schwarcz has taught Chinese history at Wesleyan University as well as at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Beijing University and Centre Chine in Paris. She is serving currently as Director of the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies and Chair of the East Asian Studies Program at Wesleyan. Her new book manuscript centers on the problem of truth in comparative history.
Rabbi René-Samuel Sirat
Rabbi Sirat was born in 1930 in Böne (Algeria). He was Chief Rabbi of France (1981–1987) and Chief Rabbi of the Central Consistory of France (since 1988). He was Vice-President of the Conference of European Rabbis (1999), founded the Rachi Institute of the Troyes University of which he has been the President since 1989. He founded the European Jewish University of which he has been the President since 1992. He founded the UNESCO Chair of inter-religious dialogue, entitled “Reciprocal Knowledge of the Religions of the Book, of the Spiritual Traditions and the Specific Cultures” of which he has been Director since 1998. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris - Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales
He published Omer Hasikha (in Hebrew, Jerusalem 1973), La joie austèree - interview with Emmanuel Hirsch (Paris 1990), La tendresse de Dieu (interview with Martine Lemalet, Paris 1996), and numerous papers and articles in the newspaper “La Revue des Etudes Juives” and in various minutes of scientific symposia. He received the following distinctions : Officier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur, Doctor Honoris Causa of the Yeshiva University (New York), Rothberg Award from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Prix de l'Amitié Judeo-Christian de France (50th Anniversary).
Zdenka Svarcova
Zdenka Svarcova is a professor of Japanese language and linguistics at Charles University in Prague. Previously, she served as a professor at Seminar of Japanese Studies at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague and in 2005 - 2007 prof. Svarcova served as director of the above mentioned institute. Between 1990 and 2007 she was Head of the Seminar of Japanese Studies. In 1972 – 1990 she worked as translator, interpreter, and teacher of Japanese and English.She is a member of the European Association for Japanese Studies, of the Czech Translator’s Association, and of the Prague Linguistics Circle.
Rodolphe von Gombergh
Eminent radiologist, Rodolphe von Gombergh (RvG) upsets the fields of the classical art. In a discipline he created, the VLA (Virtual Life Art), he makes a mixture of computing, anatomy and art. By participating in numerous state-of-the-art researches, RvG understood that the images are an essential material for the understanding of human nature. He uses scans to propose creative artistic vision, handles material and transparency, juxtaposing alive and non-alive, demonstrating that our world is made of illusions.
In 1996 The Trans-appearances at Pompidou Center, he exhibited work based on ultrasound imagery, offering a thrilling journey in-utero. In 2000, Life through transparency at the UNESCO, with his artistic vision, RvG interpreted the infinite details of nature and the human body. In 2005, at the Guimet Museum, for The interior life of Buddha, RvG used state-of-the-art scientific imagery, CT scans and MRI, to discover and reveal historic treasures hidden in the interior of Korean Buddhas dating from the 11th century. At the European House of the Photography in 2007, @rt Outsiders, RvG explored new «territories», poetically voyaging through a woman’s body to visualize its infinite transparences. RvG works to develop holograms using CT and MRI scans to intensify his magical vision of the human body.
Among his other principal exhibitions and videos are Le Printemps (1996), Montmartre Spring (2000), Universal Exhibition of Hanover (2000), International Price of Contemporary Art, Monte-Carlo (2001), La SCAM (2001), L’Opera Gallery/ Football world’s cup in Corea (2002), Paris Capitale de la Création (2004), MEP (2007), Images & Sciences (CNRS Images, Pilier Sud Tour Eiffel), Imagina’99 Monaco (1999), Mouans Sartoux (2003), Qwartz Electronic Music Awards (2007), Majestic Beach - Cannes Festival (2007).
Achyut Yagnik
Achyut Yagnik is the founder-secretary of Setu: Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, a voluntary organization based in Ahmedabad in western India, which has been working with marginalized communities since the early eighties. He was a journalist and has also taught development communication as visiting faculty in Gujarat University.
He is co-author of the book Creating a Nationality - Ramjanmabhoomi Movement and Fear of the Self (OUP 1995) and The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hindutva and Beyond (Penguin India 2005). He is currently working on a book on the history of Ahmedabad city.
Toshio Yokoyama
B.LL. and M.LL. (Kyoto); D.Phil. (Oxford), Toshio YOKOYAMA is Vice-President (International Relations) of Kyoto University, with a double professorshipat theGraduate School of Global Environmental Studies and the Institute for Research in Humanities.
Born in Kyoto a few years after the end of WWII, he entered Kyoto University to study law, which did not satisfy him. While staying in Eastern Java in 1970, he became interested in things Japanese for the first time. In 1972, he joined the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University, to pursue his interest in a Japanese nativist poet. In 1983, he received a doctorate from the University of Oxford where he studied,as a British Council scholar, modern British history during the latter half of the 1970s.
In 1993, he was Erwin von Bälz Guest Professor at Tübingen, and in 1999 Visiting Lecturer at Pembroke College, Oxford. In 2001, he joined the founding of the above-mentioned graduate school, and opened within the school a common space named ‘Sansai Gakurin’ dedicated to the promotion of universal learning. He has been Warden of that space since the summer of 2002. He was on the Advisory Board of the International Institute for Advanced Studies, Kyoto from 2003 to 2005. He has been in the chair of the Advisory Committee of Lake Biwa Museum since 2004 and also a member of the Advisory Committee of Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto since 2007.
He is the author of Japan in the Victorian Mind (London: Macmillan, 1987), a standard work for those interested in stereotyped images of nations. To his original method of graphic analysis of wear and tear of the bottom surface of old household encyclopedias, the Information Processing Society (Japan) awarded a research prize in 1993.
His other works and edited volumes include Kaibara Ekiken (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995): an introduction to the neo-Confucian thinker of a classical civilization. Currently, he is a co-editor of an English journal, SANSAI, An Environmental Journal for the Global Community. To its inaugural issue of 2006, he contributed an article entitled ‘Even a sardine’s head becomes holy: the role of household encyclopedias in sustaining civilization in pre-industrial Japan’.
