Inaugural Event for 2015-2016 commemorating the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 18 at UCSB.  Our distinguished guest speak will be Yoram Peri, former political advisor to the late Prime Minister, who is the author of Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy, The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Between Battles and Ballots: Israel Military in Politics, Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel, and Brothers at War: Rabin's Assassination and the Cultural War in Israel (in Hebrew). He is former head of Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics and Society and professor of Political Sociology and Communication at Tel Aviv University as well as former Editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily, Davar.  Currently Peri holds the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies and serves as the Director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Peri has been a senior fellows at the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC, Fulbright scholar at the American University’s School of International Service, visiting professor at Harvard University and Dartmouth College, a senior fellow at the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv University, and a senior lecturer in the department of communication at the Hebrew University.  Born in Jerusalem, he earned his B.A. and M.A. in Political Science and Sociology at the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.