Derek Penslar - Harvard University

Anat Leibler - Bar Ilan University

Tal Golan - University of California, San Diego

Ideology, Technocracy and Zionism

The meeting will focus on the various roles of technocracy in the Zionist project. Tal Golan will discuss technocracy’s roles in the pre-state period.  Anat Leibler will discuss the genealogy of Israeli statistics and its relationships to power.  Derek Penslar will explore the various meanings of technocracy in recent scholarship. The discussion will scale up from the late Ottoman/early Mandatory Yishuv to the establishment of the Modern Israeli state, and from there to the technocratic ideal in colonial and post-colonial projects, Israel included.

The panel will be the third in a four-part series inspired by the centennial for the Zionist settlement in the Jezreel Valley. The previous meetings in the series dealt with the leading technocrat of the early Zionist settlement in Palestine, Arthur Ruppin, and with the roles race theories played in Zionism in the first half of the twentieth century.

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Gathering begins an 17:45 near room 449

Chair: Shaul Katzir