Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He is President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, and Director of the John Templeton Foundation’s project in Jewish Philosophical Theology.
He is founder and past President of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, now Shalem College. His books include The Virtue of Nationalism, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, and God and Politics in Esther. His work has appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, The New Republic, Commentary, First Things, and American Affairs, among others.
Earlier he founded and headed the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute that conducted nearly two decades of pioneering work in the fields of philosophy, political theory, Bible, Talmud, Jewish and Zionist history, Middle East Studies and archaeology beginning in 1994. The Center’s publishing arm, Shalem Press, became Israel’s leading publisher of Western philosophy translated into Hebrew, and published Azure magazine. In 2013, Shalem was accredited to grant Israel’s first Liberal Arts B.A., and formally became Shalem College. Hazony served as President of Shalem from 1994-2002, and as Provost from 2005-2012. He also served as a member of the Israel Council for Higher Education’s commission on General Studies and Liberal Arts programs in Israel’s universities and colleges.
Hazony was born in Rehovot, Israel and graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. in East Asian Studies in 1986, and completed his Ph.D. at Rutgers University in Political Theory in 1993. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Yael Hazony.