About Elie Rekhess

Professor Elie Rekhess (Ph.D., Tel Aviv University) is one of Israel’s leading scholars on the Arab minority in Israel, Jewish-Arab relations, Palestinian politics, and the Islamic resurgence in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Until his retirement in 2011, he served as Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, where he also directed the Program on Jewish-Arab Cooperation in Israel, sponsored by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (1995–2010).

Since 2013, Professor Rekhess has held the position of Crown Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Northwestern University, where he teaches in both the Department of Jewish Studies and the Department of History. At Northwestern, he organized the inaugural conference The Zionist Ideal in Israeli Culture: Dream and Reality (2013), and in 2015, he convened the international conference Between Baghdad and Haifa: A Tribute to Israeli Author Sami Michael. He also founded the NU Israeli Film Club in partnership with the Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema, which launched its first screening series in 2016.

Currently, Professor Rekhess serves as Director of the Israel Innovation Project (IIP) at Northwestern University—an initiative dedicated to building academic partnerships between Northwestern and leading institutions of higher learning in Israel, particularly in STEM disciplines. His work emphasizes global collaboration and innovation, with a special focus on water technology and sustainability. A cornerstone of these efforts is the partnership between IIP and Northwestern’s Center for Water Research.