2010 Honorary Doctorate Recipients
Ron Arad
Architect and designer Ron Arad is a prominent figure in the international design world. Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, he studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem before settling in London, where he continued his training at the Architectural Association. He founded Ron Arad Associates Ltd. in 1989, followed by Architecture and Design in London in 1993 and the Ron Arad Studio in Italy in 1994. Arad is known for his experimental pieces that exploit the essential characteristics of their raw materials, draw on the latest applied research and are made using high-precision machine tools. He also works in urban sculpture, organizes workshops in Europe and serves as a Professor Emeritus at the Royal College of Art, where he recently completed a 12-year term as the Chair of its Design Department. He has won numerous awards for his designs, among which are the Design Museum in Holon, Israel, and the Maserati HQ Showroom in Rimini, Italy.
Alan Dershowitz
A leading figure in the Americanlegal world, Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. After graduating first in his class at Yale Law School, Dershowitz was made a full professor at age 28, at the time the youngest such appointee in the history of Harvard Law School. He focuses primarily on criminal law, and has participated in several high-profile criminal cases. Known worldwide for his support of Israel, Dershowitz is a prominent commentator on Israeli-Palestinian relations. He is a recipient of the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award of the Anti-Defamation League for his work in civil and human rights, among many other accolades. He has written 27 fiction and non-fiction works, and has published hundreds of articles in over 50 national newspapers and magazines.
Evgenia Dodina
Evgenia Dodina is a celebrated Israeli actress born in Mogilev, Belarus. She studied acting at the Royal Academy of Arts in Moscow before embarking on her acting career at Moscow’s Maikovsky Theater. During a trip to Israel in 1990 with theater director Yevgeny Arye and other Russian actors, she decided to remain in the country. Together with Arye, she established the Gesher Theater, one of Israel’s most esteemed theater troupes. Dodina has acted in dozens of theatrical, film and television roles in a broad range of genres, and has received several prestigious awards, among them the Rosenblum Prize for Theater Arts, the Klachkin Prize, the Best Actress award at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival for her portrayal of Hannah Robina, and two Actress of the Year awards from the Israel Theater for her roles in Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Slave. For the past three years she has been a company member of the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv. Dodina’s standing in Israeli culture was cemented in 2009 when she was chosen to light one of the 12 torches at Israel’s 61st Independence Day ceremony on Mount Herzl.
Shlomo Eliahu
Shlomo Eliahu is a leading Israeli businessman and the founder of the Eliahu Insurance Company. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Eliahu immigrated to Israel with his family in 1950. Beginning his insurance career as a courier and then insurance agent, he founded his first insurance agency in 1955, and the Eliahu Insurance Company in 1966. He served as a Member of Knesset for the “Dash” party from 1978-1980, during which time he was a member of the Finance Committee and Aliyah and Absorption Committee. At this time he also initiated business dealings in real estate, constructing several high-rise buildings. From 1982-2005 he had major holdings in Israel Phoenix and Ayalon Insurance, and in 2007 he was named the second largest shareholder in the Israeli banking sector after Shari Arison.
Marc Feldman
A professor at Stanford University, Marc Feldman has focused for the past 40 years on the application of mathematics and statistics to the fields of genetics, evolution, anthropology and demography. He first achieved international recognition for his research on complex genetic systems. Later on he worked on the mathematical theory of cultural evolution, which led to a 20- year collaboration with Chinese demographers on the gender- ratio imbalance, thus shaping policies aimed at reducing the preference for sons in China. His work on cultural evolution has profoundly influenced modern anthropology and behavioral economics. Since 1994, Feldman has studied human genetic variation at the DNA level, spearheading the largest study ever conducted in the field and working tirelessly to use genome science to combat racism. He currently serves as academic director of Bridging the Rift, a joint Israeli-Jordanian project aimed at fostering scientific relations between the two countries.
S. Lee Kohrman
A lawyer by profession, S. Lee Kohrman is a Jewish community leader from Cleveland, Ohio, and founder and owner of the law firm Kohrman, Jackson and Krantz. Since becoming director of the David and Inez Myers Foundation, Kohrman has devoted the bulk of his time to promoting social and educational issues in Israel and the American Jewish community. He achieves this through frequent visits to Israel during which he personally supervises projects throughout the country – from Kiryat Shmona to Dimona. Kohrman is a member of the board of numerous Jewish organizations in the US, and is president of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, among other roles.
Zvi Meitar
Advocate Zvi Meitar is a leading figure in Israel’s legal and business communities. After graduating from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a master of jurisprudence, Meitar founded his law firm – Meitar Liquornik Geva & Leshem Brandwein and Partners. He served as President of the Law Society of Tel Aviv from 1983 to 1995, and during that same period was a member of the state committee that appoints all Israeli judges. In the 1980s, Meitar became involved in international business ventures including partnership in one of the largest telecommunications conglomerates in Israel. He has established several family funds that have made substantial donations to numerous causes, including higher education and culture in Israel and the UK. Meitar holds many honors and awards, among them an Honorary Waynflete Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Albert Hall, and Honorary Commodore of the National Maritime Museum. He has lived in London since 2001.
Erwin Neher
Recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, Prof. Erwin Neher is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany, and chair of its Department of Membrane Biophysics. After completing his physics BSc at the Technical University of Munich in 1966, Neher won a Fulbright Fellowship for graduate studies in biophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US. He has also researched at Yale University and the California Institute of Technology. In 1986 Neher was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University and, in 1987, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation – the highest honor awarded in German research. Neher is also a professor at the University of Göttingen and a co-chair of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in that city.
Irwin M. Jacobs
Dr. Irwin Jacobs is the co-founder and former CEO of Qualcomm, a telecommunications company. He is a former associate professor of electrical engineering at MIT and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Jacobs holds several patents, and is the recipient of prestigious awards and honorary degrees, including the National Medal of Technology Award bestowed by the President of the United States, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Financial Times, the Ernst & Young Leadership Award for Global Integration, and the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship. In May 2008 he was named Chair of the US National Academy of Engineering. In the public sphere, Dr. Jacobs serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where he lives. Together with his wife, Joan, he is a generous supporter of cultural, scientific and educational institutions.
