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Dr. Gershon Shafir appointed as IICAS' Director
 Dr. Gershon Shafir, Professor in the Department of Sociology, has been named Director of IICAS. He replaces Interim Director William Chandler as the third Director of the five-year old center and organized research unit.
Professor Shafir plans among his priorities as Director to represent of international research and studies vis-à-vis the administration, foster research and collaboration among individual faculty and between area studies groups, raise extramural funds, and provide administrative resources. Shafir said that UCSD is rich in faculty whose work is dedicated to analyzing and illuminating international issues and linkages but added that since UCSD currently has relatively few research centers, it is not easy for faculty groups to coalesce outside their respective departments. Consequently, IICAS needs to serve as an intellectual and organizational hub, clearing house, and magnet for research groups and collaborative research in order to magnify the potential benefits of synergy.
One of Shafir's main goals as Director is to catalyze and facilitate research projects of UCSD faculty through program development and to forge links with private and public funding agencies regionally, nationally, and internationally. He promises to place particular emphasis to identify research interests that will allow IICAS to serve as a bridge between the social sciences and humanities as well as the sciences.
Dr. Shafir expects some of the potential clusters of interdisciplinary interest to include: human rights and international norms; globalization, global governance, NGOs and diplomacy; religious, ethnic, and transnational social movements; violence, international terrorism, and genocide; international political economy and development; global migration, refugees, citizenship and cosmopolitanism; international gender issues and movements; international public health; and environment, climate change, and national resources.
As Director of IICAS, Dr. Shafir also serves as co-Director, with Clark Gibson (Political Science), of the International Studies major. Professor Shafir plans to enrich the well-nigh 800 majors' experiences outside the classroom by establishing undergraduate clubs to be based on disciplinary and area-specific interests. During brown bag noon-time seminars, students will hear about the ongoing research of faculty and international visitors as well as their analyses of current events.
Professor Shafir was born in Hungary and raised and educated in Israel. "I was a restless student," he said, "seeking to be challenged in just the right way for me." He graduated from Tel Aviv University with two bachelor's degrees, the first in Economics and Political Science, the second in Sociology and Anthropology. Once in the United States, he was awarded an M.A. by UCLA and subsequently moved on to Berkeley to receive his Ph.D. in Sociology. He gave the following helpful advice to doctoral students on how to finish their dissertation in a timely manner: "I booked a round-the-world ticket six months in advance and completed my dissertation two days before my day of departure." Prior to coming to UCSD in 1987, he was also a journalist, a leader of the Israeli Peace Now movement, a candidate for the Israeli Parliament, and an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University.
Shafir's research seeks to address Middle Eastern concerns within comparative and historical contexts and additionally within larger thematic frameworks, while also addressing some of these theoretical issues on their own. Among the latter are citizenship and human rights, the interrelationship of domestic and foreign policy, nationalism, colonialism and development. In 2002 he received the Middle Eastern Studies Association's Albert Hourani Award for best book on the Middle East. His current work is focused on the Cold War and on the many facets of international terrorism and counterterrorism in the US and elsewhere. He is at work on a manuscript: Miscarriage of Peace: The U.S., Egypt and Israel in the Cold War, which is based on documents from the National Archive in Maryland. His most recent article "Torturing Democracies" will appear in a book he co-edited with Alison Brysk (Political Science, Irvine) National Insecurity and Human Rights: Democracies Debate Counterterrorism to be published by UC Press in April 2007.
To contact Dr. Shafir, please email him at gshafir@ucsd.edu. |
