2024 Honorary Doctorate Recipients
The Hon. Rosalie Silberman Abella, Canada
Rosalie Silberman Abella served as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Canada from 2004 to her retirement in 2021. She was initially called to the Ontario Bar in 1972 where she practiced civil and criminal litigation until 1976, when she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court, and later to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1992. Abella was the sole Commissioner of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment and created the term and concept of “employment equity.” She is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and holds 41 honorary degrees. Abella earned her BA and LLB at the University of Toronto, alongside a diploma in classical piano from the Royal Conservatory of Music. She was born in a displaced person’s camp in Germany and emigrated to Canada as a refugee with her family in 1950.
Mr. Shlomo Artzi, Israel
Shlomo Artzi is a prominent Israeli singer and songwriter whose music fuses rock with native Hebrew strains. Born in 1949 in Alonei Abba in the Galilee region, his music career was launched in the late 1960s as a soloist in the Israel Navy Troupe. He went on to appear in Israel folk festivals, winning first place three times in five years. In 1978, he received critical acclaim for his album, Gever Holech Leibud (“A Man Losing His Way”), which reflected a new and more personal musical style, with many subsequent releases following in quick succession. Artzi has sold more albums than any Israeli singer, and his sell-out performances, which tend to top three hours, are immensely popular. His repertoire includes over 400 songs and 28 albums. Among many accolades, he is the recipient of the Akum Life’s Work Prize in 2009, the Emmy Life’s Work Prize in 2021 and the 2023 Israel Prize, which he declined due to the civil unrest in Israel resulting from the judicial reform process.
Prof. Lucian A. Bebchuk, USA
Lucian Bebchuk is the James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics and Finance, and Director of the Program on Corporate Governance, both at Harvard Law School. Trained in both law and economics, he holds graduate degrees in both disciplines from Harvard University. Bebchuk is a frequent contributor to scholarship, policymaking and public debate in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. He has appeared in hearings and roundtables before the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Banking Committee and the House of Representatives Committee of Financial Services and has advised the Israeli government. He has published over 100 academic papers and numerous op-ed pieces, including in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Financial Times. A recipient of diverse accolades, Bebchuk is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, among diverse other roles.
Dr. Anita Friedman, USA
Anita Friedman is a community leader, speaker, philanthropist, activist, author and writer on social policy and programming, immigration and Holocaust education. She is President of the Koret Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the US, and was recently appointed to cochair the California Governor’s Council for Holocaust and Genocide Education. Among a range of roles, Friedman is an Executive Committee Trustee on the national board of AIPAC and a member of the Shoah Foundation board and, since 1979, has headed Jewish Family and Children’s Services in San Francisco. She has received numerous honors, including most recently the Global Light Unto the Nations Award by the American Jewish Committee for her work combating antisemitism and building strong democratic societies. At TAU, she serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Governors and Campaign Chair. Born in New York City to Holocaust survivors, she attended the University of California at Berkeley and completed her PhD at the University of San Francisco.
Prof. Andrea Goldsmith, USA
Electrical engineer Andrea Goldsmith is the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science and the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, both at Princeton University, and the former Harris Professor at Stanford University. Her research focuses on information theory, communication theory and signal processing, and their application to wireless communications, interconnected systems and neuroscience. A member of the US National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Royal Academy of Engineering, Goldsmith co-founded and served as CTO for Quantenna Communications and Plume WiFi and serves on the Board of Directors for Medtronic and Crown Castle Inc. She has received numerous accolades for her work, authored four books, published over 600 journal and conference papers and registered 38 patents. She holds BSc, MSc and PhD electrical engineering degrees from UC Berkeley.
Mr. Jan Koum, USA
Businessman, programmer and philanthropist Jan Koum is the co-founder and former CEO of WhatsApp, the world’s most popular instant messaging application. Born in Soviet Ukraine in 1976, he immigrated to California at age 16 with his mother and grandmother. Koum enrolled at San Jose State University while working in various computer companies, including nine years at Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. In 2009, he bought an iPhone and realized that the App Store – then only 7 months old – was poised to birth an entirely new industry. One week later, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. Based on the app’s incredible success, it was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion. Koum subsequently left WhatsApp and stepped down from the Facebook boards and has focused on philanthropy ever since. At Tel Aviv University, he has made major gifts to student scholarships and construction projects, and the University’s Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology now bears his name.
Mr. Yehuda Naftali, Israel
Born in Iraq, Yehuda Naftali made Aliyah as a child with his mother, grandparents and two brothers. The family started their lives in Israel on Kibbutz Hatzor, where Yehuda’s first job was as a shepherd. Following his army service as a paratrooper, he fought in the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars and later moved to Los Angeles with nothing but the shirt on his back. Following two years in a variety of jobs, he began his real estate career, eventually pioneering the open-air shopping center concept, first in Israel where he founded Big Shopping Centers Ltd. in 1994, and later, BIG Shopping Centers USA Inc. in 2010. Today, with over 40 years of experience in the business, he chairs the company’s Philanthropy Committee and continues to share his experience and expertise with Big employees.
Prof. Daniel Simberloff, USA
Ecologist Daniel Simberloff is the Nancy Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Tennessee. He was formerly affiliated with Florida State University for almost 30 years, including as Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor. His research involves species interactions and coexistence in biological communities with a focus on the design of nature reserves and the impact and management of invasive species. He is also known for his transformative work on biogeography and quantitative conservation biology and invention of largescale experimental ecology. Simberloff has been a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including at Tel Aviv University and the National Center for Scientific Research in Montpellier. He is a member of many organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Science and the Ecological Society of America. Among his many honors are the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology – the world’s preeminent prize for ecological science – and the Honorable John C. Pritzlaff Conservation Award.
Adv. Dan Yakir, Israel
Dan Yakir has been a human rights lawyer for over 40 years, giving equal respect and attention to groups and individuals from across the spectrum of ethnicity, religion, political leanings and civil status. From 1989 to 1995 he worked in the legal department of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), from 1995 to 2023, he was ACRI’s Chief Legal Counsel, and today he is ACRI President. Yakir has spearheaded diverse achievements in the promotion of human rights, among them the right to equality, freedom of expression and LGBTQ rights. He holds an LLB from Tel Aviv University’s Buchmann Faculty of Law and an LLM from American University Washington’s College of Law. Among diverse accolades, he received a special prize from Israel’s LGBT Taskforce (2005), the Human Rights Defender Prize from the New Israel Fund (2011) and, most recently, the Gorney Prize in Public Law from the Israeli Association of Public Law (2023).
