Staff

 

Our Staff

Prof. Barry Rubin (1955-2014)
Founder of the Global Research for International Affairs (GLORIA) Center

Founding editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal and editor of Turkish Studies journal. He was the author of many books, including The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His final books, published in 2014, are Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power (Broadside Books) and, with co-author Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press).

Judith Colp Rubin
Honorary President of the Rubin Center

Judith Colp Rubin is a writer and co-author with Barry Rubin of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography; Hating America: A History; and the Chronologies of Modern Terrorism. She was publisher and editor-in-chief of Women’s International Net online magazine. She has served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East for various American newspapers, and was a Washington, DC-based journalist. She is currently writing fiction.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer
Director of the Rubin Center

Dr. Jonathan Spyer is Director of the Rubin Center and Editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). He is also a fellow at the Middle East Forum. Spyer holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a Master’s Degree in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He writes the weekly “Behind the Lines” column at the Jerusalem Post newspaper and is a regular contributor to Weekly Standard magazine and to Jane’s Intelligence Review. He has been published in many leading journals including the Times (of London), the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Ha’aretz, the Atlantic, the Australian, the National Post, Globe and Mail, Jerusalem Report, Tablet magazine, and many others. He is also a frequent guest analyst on electronic media and has appeared on CNN, al-Jazeera, Fox News, BBC World, Sky News, and other outlets. In recent years, he has become particularly known for his field reporting and analysis of the war in Syria. He is the author of Days of the Fall: A Reporter’s Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars (Routledge, 2017) and The Transforming Fire: the Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2010).

 

Yeru Chernilovsky
Managing Director & Director of Publications

Yeru holds a Master’s degree in Middle East Studies from Tel Aviv University. She earned her B.A. in French and psychology from Bar-Ilan University. She is managing editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) and of Turkish Studies (published by Taylor & Francis). Her research interests include minorities and women in the Middle East. She is co-author of “The Berbers” in The Middle East: A Guide to Politics, Economics, Society, and Culture (M.E. Sharpe, 2011).

 

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz
Visiting Professor

Wolfgang G. Schwanitz is a leading historian of the Middle East. A native of East Germany, he was raised in Egypt. He holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from Leipzig University, German. He has taught at several German and American universities. He was head of Middle Eastern history at the Academy of Science in Berlin, where he also worked at the Max Planck Society’s Orient Center. He has been a visiting fellow at the French Center in Cairo, Princeton University, and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. The has authored and edited numerous books, in addition to over 150 scholarly articles on modern Middle Eastern history and international relations. He was a researcher and lecturer of Arabic, world history, and Middle Eastern history at Burlington County College in Pemberton, New Jersey, and Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum of Philadelphia.

Seth J. Frantzman
Research Associate at the Rubin Center

Seth J. Frantzman holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his B.A. from the University of Arizona and completed an M.A. in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an expert in rural settlement in the British and Ottoman periods in the Levant with a concentration on Ottoman Palestine. He has researched and published extensively on land law, the Bedouin, church history, Islamic tombs, and settlement patterns in the Middle East. From 2010 to 2015, he was an assistant professor at Al-Quds University, lecturing in American studies and concentrating on U.S.-Palestinian relations and comparative politics of U.S. national government and Palestinian civil society. During that time, he wrote and researched on the current state of Palestinian education systems and changes in Palestinian society. Since 2011, his research and field work has focused on political, military, strategic changes in the region, with a focus on the war on Islamic State, the Kurdish region of Iraq, refugee crises in Jordan, and Turkey and Egypt’s role in the region. He has published widely in academic journals such as Middle Eastern Studies, Digest of Middle East Studies, Levant, Israel Studies, Middle East Review of International Affairs. His work has also appeared in media outlets such as the National Interest, Al-Jazeera, the Spectator, and National Review. He is the Op-ed Editor of the Jerusalem Post.

 

Alex Grinberg
Research Associate at the Rubin Center

Alex Grinberg is a former Iran analyst at the Research Department of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (Aman). He is fluent in Arabic, Farsi, French, English, Spanish, Russian, and Hebrew. He is a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University, writing his dissertation on religious thought in Pahlavi Iran. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Arabic language and literature and Middle East Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also a language and cultural analyst for intuview.com and is a geopolitical analyst for alcyonrisk.com.

 

Dave McAvoy
Research Associate at the Rubin Center

Dave McAvoy is an expert on the Arabic-language media based in London who lived and studied Arabic in Damascus. With a background in television production, his research focuses on Arab Satellite TV news coverage, which he has been following for a decade. His articles have appeared on Harry’s Place and in The National, among other media outlets.

Sarit Zehavi
Research Associate at the Rubin Center

Sarit Zehavi is a national security and Middle East analyst, focusing on Lebanon and Syria, as well as on Israel’s national security challenges. Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Zehavi served for 15 years in the Israeli Defense Forces, specializing in Military Intelligence (with the IDF Research & Analysis section and later within the IDF Northern Command). She frequently briefs delegations, including U.S. Senators, members of Congress, politicians and military commanders from around the world, as well as senior journalists. As a follower of English, Hebrew, and Arabic social media, she writes and lectures on a broad range of issues related to current Middle East affairs, especially Israel, its neighbors, and Israel’s security challenges along its northern border. She holds an M.A. in Middle East Studies from Ben-Gurion University.

Neri Zilber
Research Associate at the Rubin Center

Neri Zilber is a journalist and researcher on Middle East politics and culture and an adjunct fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, Politico Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast, among other outlets. He is quoted regularly in the international press and has appeared in interviews with CNN, BBC, France 24, Al Jazeera English, and NPR. He was previously a visiting scholar at the Washington Institute, a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, an analyst at the U.S. Library of Congress, and a researcher at the World Jewish Congress. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a master’s degree from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

Melis Evcimik
Assistant Editor, Turkish Studies

Melis Evcimik is a Ph.D. student at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. She worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as research assistant for the Program on Contemporary Turkey. Her area of interest is contemporary Middle East foreign policy with a special focus on Turkish-Israeli bilateral ties. She has been working as an assistant editor for Turkish Studies journal since 2010.

Aynur Bashirova
Visting Fellow

Aynur Bashirova is a Ph.D. student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), focusing on Israeli-Azerbaijani relations. Originally from Azerbaijan, she holds an M.A. from the University of Kent (Brussels) in the International Law of War as well as an advanced Master’s from VUB (Brussels) on European Social and Political Integration. Her B.A. is from Vesalius College (Belgium) in International Relations. She has interned at the Council of Europe, Turkish Industry and Business Association in Brussels, Belgian Royal Higher Military Institute of Defence, and the European Parliament. She is also a board member of the Youth Atlantic Treaty Association of Belgium. She speaks Azerbaijani, Russian, Turkish, English, and French.