Greenberg scholar to lecture Oct. 1
Avi Rubin
“Rule of Law in the Middle East: The Ottoman Antecedent,” is the title of this fall’s
Greenberg Middle East Scholar-in-Residence lecture at Skidmore College. Avi Rubin
of Ben-Gurion University will give the lecture at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in
Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall on the Skidmore campus. Admission is free and
open to the public.
According to Rubin, the paradigm of "Oriental despotism," which had emerged in Renaissance
thought and later dominated Orientalist scholarship, has been systematically refuted
since the 1970s, mainly (but not exclusively) through the scholarship of social historians
of the Middle East. Using a socio-legal perspective, Rubin will offer the rule of
law as a key category for analyzing social and legal change in the Ottoman Empire.
Rule of law as it developed in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire was a precursor to
particular versions of the rule of law in the successor nation states, namely Turkey,
most of the Arab states and Israel. “Hence,” said Rubin, “any attempt to understand
the law as it has been imagined in the modern Middle East should take into account
the Ottoman antecedent.”
Rubin is a senior lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion
University, where he has been a faculty member since 2007. He completed his Ph.D.
at Harvard University. His research interests lie in the area of Ottoman social and
legal history, with a focus on 19th-century socio-legal change and modernity. His
book, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity, and articles address various aspects of the passage of Ottoman law to modernity,
the rule of law in the modern Middle East, and the social history of late Ottoman
Palestine. Rubin is a member of the Young Scholars Forum at the Israel Academy of
Sciences and Humanities.
This is the 11th year of the Greenberg Middle East Scholar-in-Residence Program at Skidmore College.
The Greenberg residency annually brings Israeli scholars to Skidmore from the Department
of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. While in residence,
the scholars teach, present a public lecture, and participate in the life of the college.
Each scholar is affiliated with either the history or government department, depending
on disciplinary focus. The program is administered by the Office of the Dean of Special
Programs at Skidmore, and is funded by the generous support of Skidmore alumna Jane
Greenberg.
