Faculty

The program, conducted entirely in English, combines academic training and practical skills. Its unique curriculum includes courses, seminars and "hands on" workshops taught exclusively to Argov Fellows by leading academic and professional experts.

Dr. Alisa Rubin Peled
Dr. Alisa Rubin Peled is the founding academic director of the Argov Fellows Program. She is a senior lecturer in RU's Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy. She also serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and an external faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Public Diplomacy Collaborative. She completed her Ph.D. in history and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and her M.A. in International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University. Alisa specializes in international political economy (Middle East) and global higher education.
 
Dr. Pamela Peled
Pamela Peled grew up in South Africa. At seventeen Pamela left home for Jerusalem, to study English Literature at the Hebrew University.  After completing her MA she taught for many years and did a PhD in Literature at Bar Ilan University.  She is a journalist with 2 columns in The Jerusalem Post and is a contributing editor of “Esra Magazine.”  Pamela lectures at the Reichman University and Beit Berl College in Israel, and gives guest lectures in Europe, England and America.  She has led study courses to Stratford-Upon-Avon, and lectures on Shakespeare on Cruise Ships. Her book How to Have a Husband and Live with your Lover (at the Same Time) examines life and literature. Her novel, For the Love of God and Virgins, exposes the distorted way the world views life in the Middle East. In Three Ladies, Three Lattes she looks at various issues together with women of different religious streams. Pamela lives near Tel Aviv.  She has three daughters.
Ms. Sara M. Averick
Prior to founding Lead Story Plus, Ltd., the Jerusalem-based strategic communications firm, Sara M. Averick was Director of Research at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby, in Washington, D.C.  She also served as an editor at The Jerusalem Report. Ms. Averick, who earned a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, teaches at Reichman University.   
Dr. Yair MacClanahan Sohfet
Yair MacClanahan Shophet is a lecturer at Reichman University, concentrating on the field of international relations, political economy, globalisation, history and European studies. He did his MA at the London School of Economics with a thesis that evaluated the effects of the EU's Eastern enlargement on migration. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the forces behind the process of macro-regional integration, thus explaining the evident gap in integrative success between the various continents, which was presented at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He then obtained his post-doc at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University.
 Dr. MacClanahan Shophet has lectured extensively at the Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, Al-Quds University and the Central Bureau for Statistics. He is fluent in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, French and Russian, and speaks a number of other languages at a lower level.
Dr. Maoz Rosenthal
Dr. Maoz Rosenthal is an assistant professor at RU's Lauder school. DR. Rosenthal earned his Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University’s Political Science department. He held visiting positions at SUNY Binghamton and Yale University. His research focuses on three main issues: governability in multiparty parliamentary democracies, the politics of substantive representation and policy making in constitutional courts. His research focuses on Israeli politics yet studying it from a comparative perspective using rational choice theory and quantitative empirical analysis. His research was published in a variety of leading outlets such as Political Studies, Constitutional Political Economy, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis and Lexington Press.
Dr. Orly Idan
Dr. Idan teaches psycholinguistics; language, emotion and conflict; and academic research and writing; and is a senior associate researcher at the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University, and at the Martin Springer Center for Conflict Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Her current research interests are the effect of linguistic cues on generating emotions within the context of intractable conflicts; discourse analysis of students' encounters with narratives of the other; mentalization and language development; resilience sources; and, salutogenic interventions in conflictual settings. She was a postdoctoral associate at the Conflict Management Program at Ben Gurion University, focusing on a sense of coherence-based assessment aimed at evaluating an acute psychiatric in-patient unit's needs and development of an intervention program. Her PhD dissertation from Tel Aviv University focused on resilience sources, socio-emotional self-perceptions, family climate and hopeful thinking among students. She completed her M.A degree in psycholinguistics at Tel Aviv University.
Ms. Miri Eisin
Miri Eisin served in the Israeli intelligence community and retired at the rank of full colonel in 2004. She served in diverse positions in the intelligence community, including serving as the S2 at the brigade level and G2 at the Division level, research department head, adjutant to the chief of staff and to the DMI.
Miri served as the Israeli Prime Minister's spokesperson from the second Lebanon war until the end of 2007.  She now teaches at Reichman University, is a fellow at the center for international communication at Bar Ilan University, and an associate at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism.
Miri is active in the Deborah Forum, WIIS and is a director in the Taub center for social policy research.
Miri holds a BA from Tel Aviv University in Middle Eastern studies and Political Science, an MA from Haifa University in Security studies and is a graduate of the Israeli national defense college.
Dr. Jennifer Shkabatur
Jennifer Shkabatur is an Assistant Professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy & Strategy at Reichman University, and a Specialist on Social Development and Information & Communication Technologies at the World Bank.
Jennifer's research interests include information policy, open government and open data, governance innovations in developed and developing countries, and the political economy of post-Soviet countries. Jennifer's scholarly research draws on her practical experience at the World Bank, Open Society Foundations, and other international organizations, where she has worked on a range of social development and open government projects.
Before joining the RU, Jennifer was a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University. She also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Law and a Byse Teaching Fellow at Harvard Law School, practiced in large American and Israeli law firms, and clerked for Justice Eliezer Rivlin at the Supreme Court of Israel.
Jennifer holds SJD and LLM degrees as a Fulbright Scholar from Harvard Law School and MA in Political Science and LLB degrees from Tel Aviv University.
 

Adv. Ira Reiner
Mr. Reiner has had a long and distinguished career. As the Los Angeles District Attorney, he directed the largest local prosecutorial office in the world with over 1,000 attorneys and 200 investigators. As City Attorney for Los Angeles he headed the largest municipal law office in the US. As City Controller, he was Los Angeles's Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Mr. Reiner served as Los Angeles City Fire Commissioner. Mr. Reiner's private law practice has emphasized general civil litigation, criminal defense and appellate court advocacy. Continuing his public service, Mr. Reiner most recently served as the President and CEO of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (2010-2015). Mr. Reiner has authored articles on law and politics for the OP-ED pages of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Additionally, he has served as Senior Legal Affairs consultant and on-air commenter for NBC- TV and has provided extensive legal and political commentary for ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and MSNBC.