Benny Morris  Professor of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University and the Skidmore College Middle East Scholar in Residence will be giving a lecture tonight on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict titled 1948: Back to the Beginnings. The talk is free and open to the public and begins at 8pm in Gannett.

Born in Israel in 1948, the year of Israel’s founding, from parents who emigrated from Britain to Israel in 1947, Benny Morris “grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere.”* While a journalist at The Jerusalem Post for many years, Morris established his reputation as an historian – and as pre-eminient among the “new historians” – with the 1988 publication of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, in which he “revolutionized Israeli historiography and, to a great extent, a nation’s understanding of its own birth.” In this and subsequent writing – nearly a dozen books and countless articles – Morris has painted “a far more complex picture (of the Israeli-Arab conflict) than many Israelis were prepared to accept,” and indeed a more troubling picture than the scholarly and general public on all sides of the political divide have frequently been happy to receive. Without abandoning his allegiance to the historical record, Morris plays out t! he consequences of his findings, as he sees them, in commentaries on the current political conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world. Indeed, though he still characterizes himself as a liberal Zionist, his work has recently provoked Liberals for his forceful depiction of what he sees as predominatly Arab responsibility for the failures of the various peace processes. Never one to “flatter anyone’s prejudices, least of all his own,” and possessed now of what he has called a “cosmic pessimism,” Morris’ mastery of, and perspective on, the history of the Arab-Zionist conflict is unique, if not unmatched.

Details on the Residency and future events may be found here.