Israeli diplomat Haim Koren speaks at St Petersburg University
The University hosted a public lecture by Dr. Haim Koren, the former Ambassador of Israel to Egypt and South Sudan, a specialist in the Middle East. The event was attended by Olga Slov, the Consul General of the State of Israel in St Petersburg.
The diplomat’s lecture was devoted to the history of the Middle East and the geopolitical, cultural and mythological aspects of its heritage.
I’m speaking to you as a representative, on the one hand, of a very ancient civilisation, and, on the other hand, of a young national state founded 60 years ago.
Doctor Haim Koren
In his speech, he touched upon the history of the development of Jewish social and political thought, which combines the preservation of lasting values and the definition of modern national identity, in the context of a changing global political environment. The lecturer also paid special attention to the development of Israel in the context of interethnic relations between the countries and peoples of the region.
At the end of the lecture, there was a round table with the honoured guest, attended by teaching staff and Orientalists scholars of St Petersburg University.
Haim Koren is an Israeli diplomat, the Ambassador of the State of Israel to Egypt in 2014–2016, a specialist in the Middle East. He was also the first Israeli ambassador to South Sudan and served as Director of the Middle East Department at the Centre for Political Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel. He served in diplomatic institutions in Chicago (the USA) and Kathmandu (Nepal).
In 1993–1995, he was a member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. In 2008–2011, he taught at the Israel’s National Security College, where he lectured on the topics of Islam and the Arab world, Muslim radicalism, Israeli foreign policy and the current situation in the Middle East. Since 2011 he has been a Member of the Advisory Board of the Slovenian Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies. He worked at the University of Haifa, where since 2016 he has been a Board member of the Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa. In 2017, he took up teaching at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya. Since May 2018 he has been an Honorary Member of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UETSTC).