INSTITUTE FOR LIBERTY AND RESPONSIBILITY

from Herzliyan 2023

Herzliyan 2023

The new Institute for Liberty and Responsibility (LibRes) is a prestigious research institute dedicated to the study of democracy in Israel. Headed by Dr. Amnon Cavari of the Lauder School, and with the generous support of the Nadav Foundation, the Institute brings together leading academic scholars, experts, and experienced practitioners to study, teach, and enhance democratic and liberal values in Israel.

The Institute held its annual conference titled “Israel – a Voting State: Challenges and Democratic Resilience” on the historic day of November 29th, 2022. Amidst efforts to form a stable government, after five electoral campaigns within three years of political instability, the conference brought together academics, politicians, and social entrepreneurs from Israel and abroad to discuss challenges to Israeli democracy and the means to address them.

Dr. Cavari in his opening remarks laid out the Institute’s mission, saying, “In all our activities, research, teaching as well as public outreach, the institute’s goals are aimed to encourage knowledgebased discourse, strengthen public involvement, and mark the red lines for Israeli democracy.” President of Israel, Mr. Isaac Herzog, greeted the audience and emphasized Israel’s commitment to maintaining a liberal democracy based on the principles stated in the November 29, 1947 historical U.N. partition resolution and in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Former speaker of the Knesset, MK Mickey Levy warned that the outcome of the recent elections and the forming coalition suggests not only a change of government, but a regime transformation that will strike a blow to Israeli democracy.

Prof. Rafi Melnick, President of Reichman University, argued that militant Israeli groups, weakening of the founding political forces, and Palestinian terror are the three factors that prevent Israeli society from reaching a consensus regarding our desired borders, which in turn impedes building a shared consensus based on the values of liberal democracy stated in the Declaration of Independence. Prof. Uriel Reichman, Founding President of the University and Chairman of the Board of Directors, expressed his concern that the suggested reforms of the new coalition will change the founding social and political contract of the state of Israel and its basic principles of liberal democracy, as stated in the Declaration of Independence and supported by most groups of Israel’s society. The keynote speakers, Prof. Yascha Mounk and Micha Goodman, emphasized the shared challenges to liberal democracy around the world due to the rise of populism, economic stagnation, spreading use of social media, multicultural societies and environmental changes.

**Honors Program for undergraduate and graduate students at Reichman University at a study tour to Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality**

As part of its extensive research program, LibRes conducts numerous surveys of Israeli public opinion to measure the pulse of Israeli democracy. These are used to generate an index of government trust, public support of government, and levels of polarization in Israeli society. The work of LibRes appears regularly on various popular and academic venues. LibRes also supports research of scholars in Israel and abroad that examines levels of political responsiveness, and means and effects of public participation in Israel. Following its commitment to promote publicly accessible fact-based empirical knowledge of Israeli democracy, LibRes publishes routine accessible summaries (in Hebrew) of newly published academic studies on Israeli politics and society.

LibRes is engaged in academic teaching at Reichman University. It runs a competitive honors program for excellent undergraduate and graduate students from all schools at Reichman University, which combines theoretical research and practical experience to address dominant policy issues on the Israeli political agenda. The topic for this year, selected with cooperation with the students in a two-day off-campus retreat, is education reform. In addition, LibRes offers internship opportunities for RU students for hands-on research experience, and grants a competitive prize award for the best paper on political representation in Israel.

LibRes is routinely engaged in public outreach, and its researchers and fellows routinely write op-eds to various newspapers in Israel, are active on social media outlets, and publish reports and research summaries on its accessible, informative, and dynamic website. LibRes also holds occasional conferences that are open to the public and are live streamed. Among these, LibRes held in 2022 three day-long public events: the annual Democracy Day conference (in cooperation with the RUNI Student Union), a conference on political polarization in Israel, and a conference on political violence in Israel (in cooperation with ICT).