Former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, D.C. and Chief Negotiator with Syria, Itamar Rabinovich has served as the President of Tel Aviv University since 1999. A faculty member since 1971, he has been Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Dean of the Humanities and Rector. He is the incumbent of the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair of Contemporary Middle Eastern History. Dr. Rabinovich has also held visiting appointments at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Toronto, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. He was an A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University from 1997-2002.
Dr. Rabinovich is the author of several books, including Syria Under the Ba’ath; The War for Lebanon; The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations; The Brink of Peace: Israel and Syria; and Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century. The College Reader Israel in the Middle East, which he co-edited with Jehuda Reinharz, will be published in a revised expanded version in 2007. Dr. Rabinovich is amember of the Trilateral Commission, Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Wexner Israel Program and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Brookings Institution. He is a board member of Bank Leumi, USA.
Born in 1942, Dr. Rabinovich is married and has two daughters. He holds a B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an M.A. from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. from UCLA. He served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from 1963-1969 and held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel (res.).