Washington, D.C. – Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service announced that renowned international historian Michael B. Oren has joined the faculty as Visiting Professor. Beginning in Fall 2008, he will teach undergraduate and graduate students in courses on America in the Middle East, military history of the modern Middle East, and the history of Zionist diplomacy.

“Michael Oren is a great addition to our community of scholars and will enhance our cadre of experts in the growing Program for Jewish Civilization,” said Robert L. Gallucci, dean of the School of Foreign Service. “I am pleased to welcome him to the School of Foreign Service and know he will offer valuable contributions to our understanding of critical issues in the Middle East.”

In addition to his position at Georgetown, Oren is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research facility, where he specializes in the diplomatic and military history of the Middle East. Oren joins other distinguished faculty associated with the Program for Jewish Civilization (PJC) including Jacques Berlinerblau, PJC director and associate professor of Jewish civilization; Ambassador Dennis Ross, visiting professor of Jewish civilization; Yossi Shain, founding director of PJC and professor of comparative government and diaspora politics; Robert Lieber, professor of government and international affairs; and, Avi Beker, Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor in the department of government.

“In addition to being one of the most distinguished historians of modern Israel, Professor Oren brings to our program his well-known strengths as a public intellectual who is skilled at communicating with a broad audience,” says Berlinerblau.

“I am honored and excited to join the School of Foreign Service and the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown,” Oren says. “Together, the SFS and the PJC represent the nation’s strongest faculty for the study of Israel and the modern Middle East, with unparalleled depth and diversity. Georgetown is also distinguished by an administration committed to openness and balance in this crucial field and, above all, by an elite student body.”

A graduate of Princeton and Columbia universities, Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. He was a Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University and a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University. In 2006, he was a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale, returning to Yale in 2007. He has testified before Congress on Middle Eastern affairs and briefed the White House.

Oren is the author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2002). The book was a New York Times bestseller, and won the Los Angeles Times’ History Book of the Year prize and the National Jewish Book Award. His most recent book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, was eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He has written extensively for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, of which he is a contributing editor, and has been interviewed on CNN, Fox, The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show, and Today. He is the CBS Middle East expert.

Raised in New Jersey, where he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold medal winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Michael Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the first Lebanon War, and as a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an army spokesman in the second Lebanon War. He acted as a representative of the Prime Minister’s Office to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, and as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations. He was the director of Inter-Religious Affairs in the government of Yitzhak Rabin.

About the Program for Jewish Civilization

The Program for Jewish Civilization (PJC) is an interdisciplinary research and teaching and outreach center of Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Students are introduced to Judaism’s global dimensions, ethical aspects, and interrelationship with other peoples and polities. This innovative program, established in 2004, focuses not only on religion and history, but also on the wider cultural, political, philosophical, scientific and literary accomplishments of the Jewish people. For more information about the Program for Jewish Civilization, visit http://pjc.georgetown.edu/.

About the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

Founded in 1919 to educate students and prepare them for leadership roles in international affairs, the School of Foreign Service remains committed to intercultural understanding and service in the global arena, ideals held by its founder and first dean, the Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. For more information about the School of Foreign Service, visit http://www.georgetown.edu/sfs.

About Georgetown University

Georgetown University is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in America, founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll. Georgetown today is a major student-centered, international, research university offering respected undergraduate, graduate and professional programs on its three campuses in Washington, DC. For more information about Georgetown University, visit www.georgetown.edu.