The Case for Nationalism December 8, 2014 – December 12, 2014
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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 The Case for Nationalism December 8, 2014 – December 12, 2014 Participant Biographies Aviad Bakshi Israel Dr. Aviad Bakshi is the head of the legal department of the Kohelet Policy Forum. Dr. Bakshi, a former Hesder Yeshiva teacher, completed his first and second law degrees with honors at Bar-Ilan University. He was admitted to the Israeli bar after his internship in the High Court Department of the State Attorney’s Office. Dr. Bakshi wrote his doctoral thesis as part of the president's scholarship for excelling Ph.D. students on “proper constitutional significance of Israel as a Jewish state,” which won the Begin Award in 2012. During his doctorate, Mr. Bakshi was a research fellow at the Schwartz Institute of Political Philosophy Studies at Beit Morasha. Since 2004, he has been involved in legislative and constitutional initiatives as an independent scholar, a member of the Institute for Zionist Strategies constitution team, the legal editor of MK Michael Eitan and Professor Moshe Koppel’s proposed constitution, head of the Weiler Foundation’s legislative project at Bar-Ilan University, and director of a of the Berliner Institute—a clinic for legislative initiatives at the Ono Academic College. The research conducted by Dr. Bakshi in public law focuses on issues relating to the identity of Israel as a democratic nation-state and issues related to separation of powers. Dr. Bakshi serves as a legal adviser of the Department of International Law of the Military Advocate General in his reserve duty. Alongside his work at Kohelet, Dr. Bakshi teaches constitutional and administrative law at Ono Academic College, the University of Haifa, and Bar- Ilan University. Ran Bar-Yoshafat Israel Mr. Bar-Yoshafat has conducted numerous Israel advocacy speaking tours in the United States and has also worked for the Legal Department of the Knesset. Mr. Bar-Yoshafat was previously the Jerusalem District Director for the EZ-Way Psychometric Company, where he taught classes for struggling minorities. In addition, he has led groups of “MASA” young adult tours throughout Israel and has given lectures to a wide range of audiences on various matters relating to Israel and project building. Mr. Bar-Yoshafat has also been active with a variety of pro-Israel organizations including the Jewish Agency for Israel (The Zionist Seminars and the Summer Delegates programs), StandWithUs, and WUJS. Mr. Bar-Yoshafat received an LL.B. from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, an M.A. in American Jewish History from Haifa University, and is now completing his MBA from Tel-Aviv University. Randy E. Barnett United States of America Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, he tried many felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago. A recipient of a Bradley Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies, Professor Barnett has been a visiting professor at Penn, Northwestern, and Harvard Law School. Professor Barnett’s most recent books are Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (2nd ed. 2014), The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (2nd ed. 2014), A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case (2013), Constitutional Law: Cases in Context (2nd ed. 2013), Contracts: Cases and Doctrine (5th ed. 2012), and The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Contracts (2010). In 2004, he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzalez v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he was one of the lawyers representing the National Federation of Independent Business in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. In 2013, he appeared on PBS’s Constitution USA with Peter Sagal and he portrayed a prosecutor in the 2010 science-fiction feature film, InAlienable. David Bernstein United States of America David Bernstein became Executive Director of The David Project in August 2010. During his time at The David Project, Mr. Bernstein has transformed and rebranded the organization, focusing on the need for expanding relationships with campus opinion leaders. Mr. Bernstein spent thirteen years at the American Jewish Committee, where he began as director of the Washington regional office and served in management roles overseeing regional offices and national and local programming and advocacy. During his time at AJC, Mr. Bernstein was a leading advocate for Israel on the legislative, diplomatic, media, and intergroup relations fronts. He was a founder of the Israel on Campus Coalition of Greater Washington. He is author of AJC’s Israel in the Media, and dozens of op-ed pieces and letters appearing in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, the Jerusalem Post and Chronicle of Higher Education. He has provided pro-Israel media training in cities across the country and to Israeli diplomats based in the United States. Mr. Bernstein was a leading player in the successful nationwide effort to overturn the decision of the Presbyterian Church USA to divest its holdings from Israel. Sarah Chin Israel Sarah Chin recently moved to Israel and is a Research Assistant at the Institute for Cognitive War Research. Additionally, she is a freelance writer having been published in the Jerusalem Post Magazine and the N’shei Chabad Newsletter. Recently Ms. Chin was a 2012-2013 Israel Government Fellow at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has worked for StandWithUs, the Zionist Organization of America, and the United States Senate. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Global Studies from the University of Minnesota (2004) and an M.A. in International Security Affairs from the University of Denver (2010). Yishai Fleisher Israel Rabbi Yishai Fleisher is Director of Programming and radio personality at the new Voice of Israel network (launching this month) and Israel’s only English- language broadcast-radio talk show host (106.5 FM Galey Yisrael). He is a columnist at the Jerusalem Post Magazine and a contributing editor at JewishPress.com. Rabbi Fleisher is the founder and director of Kumah, an organization dedicated to deepening understanding of the Middle East and inspiring connection to Israel through media projects, seminars, and cultural events. Rabbi Fleisher holds a B.A. in political science from Yeshiva University (magna cum laude), a J.D. from Cardozo Law (concentration on International Law), and a rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Aharon Ziegler of Kollel Agudat Achim. From 2003 to 2011 he was Director of Programming at Israel National Radio, building the English-language internet station from two to thirty shows—including his own “Yishai and Friends”—and establishing it as one of the largest independent providers of English-language radio content on Israel and the Middle East. In 2006 Rabbi Fleisher ran for Knesset on the Atid Echad - Ethiopian party list, and in 2013 he directed the English division of the Jerusalem United Party list in a successful bid for two seats on the Jerusalem Municipality. Rabbi Fleisher served as a Paratrooper in the IDF and continues to participate in an elite battlefield reserve unit. His analysis and commentary have been featured on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, Xinhua, MTV, Sipa Press, and Fox News. He speaks Hebrew, English, and Russian. Stanislav Gluzman Ukraine Stanislav Gluzman was born in Kharkov, Ukraine. In 2003, he graduated from the Economics Faculty of Moscow State University (bachelor’s degree) and in 2005 from the Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation with specialization in Financial Management (Master’s degree). He returned to his hometown and opened his own company, which is engaged in wholesale trade. Since 2007, he has been taking an active part in the life of his city’s Jewish community, and in late 2009, became the chief organizer of the Jewish Business Club (JBC), which became a platform for closer communication between young Jewish businessmen in Ukraine and other CIS countries by improving their business education and ensuring greater involvement in the life of their Jewish communities. Tara Helfman United States of America Tara Helfman is an Associate Professor at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2006, where she was the Yale Journal of International Law Young Scholar of the Year and the recipient of the Joseph Parker Prize for Legal History. An undergraduate alumna of Queens College (1999), she was one of the first two recipients of a British Marshall Scholarship to have graduated from the City University of New York. She went on to obtain advanced degrees in intellectual history and legal theory from Cambridge University and University College London. Professor Helfman teaches contracts, constitutional law, Law of the Sea, and international law. Her primary research interests are public international law and constitutional history. She is the co-author with Edgar McManus of the two-volume Liberty and Union: A Constitutional History of the United States (Routledge: 2014). She is a regular commentator on legal affairs for Radio Free Europe’s Russia Service, and her articles on constitutional issues have appeared in Commentary magazine. Before joining the academy, Professor Helfman was an Associate at the New York office of Debevoise and Plimpton, LLP, in the International Dispute Resolution and Securities Law Practice Groups. Rachel Hoff United States of America Rachel Hoff serves as Director of External Affairs for the Foreign Policy Initiative. She recently received a Master of Global Policy Studies from the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Rachel was a founding staff member of FPI in 2009 and served as Director of Government Relations & Outreach until 2012.