Crown Visiting Professor, Israel Studies · Head of the Israel Innovation Project (IIP) · Israel Liaison, Office of the VP for International Relations, Northwestern University
For five decades, Professor Rekhess has studied Arab society in Israel — as a scholar, an advisor to prime ministers, and a public voice.
Since 2013 he has served as Crown Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Northwestern University, where he heads the Israel Innovation Project (IIP) and serves as Israel Liaison at the Office of the Vice President for International Relations.
Professor Rekhess (Ph.D., Tel-Aviv University) is a leading historian of the contemporary Middle East, specializing in the study of the Arab minority in Israel and Islamic resurgence within the Palestinian society. He authored and edited over a dozen books related to his fields of interest; his most recent book was entitled Muslim Minorities in Non-Muslim Majority States (Hebrew).
He served as a Strategic Advisor to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and as an Advisor to the Ministerial Committee on the Arabs in Israel. Until his retirement in 2011, he taught at the Department of Middle East History at Tel Aviv University. Rekhess served as a Senior Research Fellow in the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, and headed the Program on Jewish-Arab Cooperation in Israel sponsored by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (1995–2010).
As of 2013, Prof. Rekhess holds the position of Crown Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Northwestern University, teaching in the Department of Jewish Studies as well as in the Department of History. In 2014 he established Israel Studies at the Crown Center and was appointed Associate Director for Israel Studies. He served in this position until 2020, when he shifted his interest in Israel Studies toward science and technology and established the Israel Innovation Project (IIP), based in Weinberg College, with the aim of developing the academic ties between Northwestern and Israeli universities, with a special emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math.