Dr. Avi Beker - Avi Beker received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York specializing in international security, arms control and the United Nations.
He was a member of the Israeli mission to the United Nations (1977-82). For twenty years Beker served in the World Jewish Congress, as the executive director in Israel, the international director and finally as the Secretary General, the chief executive officer of the umbrella organization of world Jewish communities.
Beker participated and led international campaigns against anti-Semitism, Holocaust restitution, defending Jewish human rights and advocating for rights of Jews from Arab countries. Under the auspices of the WJC, he founded the Israel Council for Foreign Relations and the Institute for Research of the WJC which he subsequently headed. He has published books and articles on international politics and security, disarmament, Israel's foreign policy and Jewish affairs.
He lectures regularly on these topics in Israel and abroad. On December 2007 Beker received the Boris Smolar award from the American Jewish distribution Committee (JDC) for his research studies and essays on international Jewish affairs. In 2004-7 he lectured to MA students of Diplomacy and headed the program on Jewish Diplomacy at the school of Government and Policy at Tel Aviv University.
His book The Chosen: the History of an Idea and the Anatomy of an Obsession was published on May 2008 by Palgrave-Macmillan.
Hillel Fradkin - Hillel Fradkin joined Hudson Institute as a senior fellow in June 2004. He directs Hudson's Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World.
Prior to joining Hudson, Fradkin was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he directed the Islam and American Democracy program, the Jewish Studies program, and the Foreign Policy program.
From 1998 to 2001, Fradkin was the W.H. Brady Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, after giving a decade of service to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation as vice president. From 1983 to 1986 Fradkin was a program officer with the John M. Olin Foundation.
Fradkin has a long history of service in higher education. From 1987 to 1998, he was a professor at the University of Chicago; from 1979 to 1986 he was an assistant professor at Barnard College and Columbia University; from 1977 to 1979 he was a visiting instructor at Yale University; and from 1977 to 1979 he was assistant director of the Project on Islamic Thought at the University of Maryland.
Hudson Institute hosts a discussion of the recently published book "The Chosen: The History of an Idea; the Anatomy of an Obsession" with its author Avi Beker and commentator Hillel Fradkin.
In his new book, Beker addresses the contemporary revival of anti-Semitism and its implications through a focus on the Biblical notion of the chosen, its primary meaning and its historical fate- Hudson Institute