Joyce Gelb
Asher Arian, one of Israel's most prominent political scientists, died on July 6 after a long illness, a four-year battle with cancer. He was 71. Asher Arian was a leading political scientist both in Israel and the United States.
Born in Cleveland in 1938, Arian graduated from John Adams High School, earned a bachelor's degree at Western Reserve University in 1961 and went on to master's and doctoral degrees in 1965 at Michigan State. Joining Tel Aviv University in 1966, he founded and led its political science department. He later led the Golda Meir Institute of Labor and Social Research there. He also became the university's dean of social sciences. Arian continued his professional affiliations in Israel with appointments in 1990 as a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and, in 1995, as a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem. He later served as senior fellow there. He brought the Guttmann Institute for Applied Social Research (now Guttmann Center) to the Institute. In 2006, the Guttman Center won the Tolerance Prize from the Public Committee of Tolerance, a nonpartisan organization to curtail violence. In 2005, Arian was awarded a Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award by the Israel Political Science Association.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he led the Robert F. Wagner Sr. Center for Urban Public Policy at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. He was a distinguished professor at the City University Graduate Center, having joined the faculty in 1986 and also serving as the executive officer of the department of political science. Arian wrote or co-authored more than 25 books and dozens of articles that have appeared in prestigious academic journals. Among his books are a series on elections in Israel and, in 1973, The Choosing People: Voting Behavior in Israel. He was considered the pre-eminent scholar of public opinion in Israel. As a researcher, he was one of the initiators of the use of survey research in Israeli political science. His books and articles on Israel spanned nearly half a century. His first book was Empathy and Ideology: Aspects of Innovative Administration, published in 1966 by Charles Press. He turned then almost exclusively to Israel studies (he wrote a book on New York City politics in the 1990s, as well), publishing Ideological Change in Israel in 1968. His most recent book was Elections in Israel 2006, which appeared two years ago. The latter was one of a series of books edited by Arian (often with Michal Shamir) on the Israeli elections, starting with the 1973 elections. He also issued a series of reports on Israeli public opinion and national security. Other important books by Arian include Hopes and Fears of Israelis: Consensus in a New Society (with Aaron Antonovsky); The Choosing People: Voting Behavior in Israel; Politics in Israel: The Second Generation; Security Threatened: Surveying Israeli Opinion on Peace and War; National Security and Public Opinion in Israel; and Executive Governance in Israel (with David Nachmias and Ruth Amir).
A founder and head of the Israeli Political Science Association, Arian was also a key leader in the International Political Science Association. He helped establish the place of Israeli political science in the IPSA. Later, he served as editor of the association's prestigious book series.
He will be remembered by many for his mentorship and collegiality. A person of great wit and humor, he encouraged and guided a second generation of Israeli political scientists.
Survivors include his wife, Carol Gordon-Arian; three children; 10 grandchildren; and three stepchildren, including Seth Gordon, associate artistic director until recently of the Cleveland Play House.
Michael Shamir and Ranan Kuperman
Asher Arian, pioneer and founder of modern political science in Israel and probably the best known scholar of Israeli politics, passed away on July 7, 2010.
Asher Arian made Aliya in 1966. Within a few years, he had founded the political science department at Tel Aviv University and established it as a vibrant, first-rate, modern, and empirically oriented alternative to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem department—until then, the only place that political science was practiced and taught at in Israel. He imported to Israel the behavioral revolution, concepts, and research tools. He established the scientific research of elections and public opinion. He brought into being the Israeli Political Science Association, was its first chair, and fostered its connection to the International Political Science Association. In 2005, he deservedly received its Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award. He initiated and institutionalized the major ongoing research projects in and about Israeli politics, including:
1. The Israel National Election Studies (INES) comprises an election survey and an edited book published after each election, which covers the elections and Israeli politics from various perspectives. The first election study was carried out in 1969, and since 1984, this became a collaborative project with Michal Shamir.
2. The National Security and Public Opinion Project was initiated in 1985 at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies and includes annual surveys and reports of Jewish public opinion on issues related to national security.
3. The Democracy Index, carried out under the auspices of the Israel Democracy Institute, came into being in 2003 and includes a yearly audit of Israeli democracy based on comparative and historical system-level indicators and survey data.
4. The Guttman Center was established in 1998 within the Israel Democracy Institute. It maintains the most comprehensive database on public opinion surveys in Israel, including surveys since 1947 of the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research.
Each of these projects was groundbreaking when initiated. They all have been institutionalized and carried on since their establishment. They have both academic and public import and impact. Taken together, they provide essential sources for the study of Israeli democracy over time regarding its peculiarities, strengths and weaknesses. Asher Arian drew on them in his own work; many Israeli and international scholars and students rely on them in their studies of Israeli politics and society and continue to do so.
Asher Arian authored and coauthored dozens of books and articles on Israeli government and politics, elections, public opinion, and political behavior that were published in the major journals and academic presses in English and in Hebrew. Although most of his studies focused on the general public, he thought of politics as elite politics. His most influential books were Hopes and Fears of Israelis: Consensus in a New Society; The Choosing People: Voting Behavior in Israel; Security Threatened: Surveying Israeli Opinion on Peace and War; his textbook (published in three editions) Politics in Israel: The Second Generation; and the 13 volumes of The Elections in Israel series.
Asher Arian moved between the United States and Israel in his professional and personal life. He was born in Cleveland in 1938, received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Western Reserve University in 1961 and a doctorate in political science from Michigan State University in 1965. In 1966, he made “Aliya” to become the founding chair of the political science department and one of the founding fathers of the social sciences faculty at Tel Aviv University. Since the late 1980s, together with his spouse Carol, he divided his time between the United States and Israel and held joint appointments at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Haifa and the Israel Democracy Institute. Without doubt, the center of his life and academic career was Israel. Israel was his major field of research, and his family lives there: three children and seven grandchildren. He was an involved citizen and an astute observer of Israeli society and politics; his opinion was sought after by academics, politicians, and journalists.
Asher was loved and admired by generations of students and research associates, whom he loved to mentor and foster; many of them became his friends. His fight against cancer in his last years was courageous and stubborn. He continued to work relentlessly until the very last days. His most recent article “The Election Compass: Party Profiling and Voter Attitudes” (co-authored with Andre Krouwel, Mark Paul, and Raphael Ventura), will be published in the The Elections in Israel—2009 , which he co-edited with Michal Shamir. Asher was fun to be with: his wisdom and good sense, his wit and humor, his compassion—widely conferred, though selective—touched the lives of many. The loss of Asher is thus both private and public. It is a personal loss to so many of us—family, friends, colleagues, and students. And it is a great loss to the profession, upon which he left such a significant imprint since he came to Israel almost 45 years ago and where he stayed until his very last days.
