Galia Golan is a professor in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, specializing in issues related to globalization, international crises and current political issues. Professor Golan came to the IDC from a long career at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where, as Darwin Professor of Soviet and East European Studies, she served as chair of the Department of Political Science, chair of the Lafer Center for Women’s Studies, and chair of the Mayrock Center for East European and Eruasian Studies. She has served as a consultant to the IDF on the status of women and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs. A frequent radio and television commentator, Professor Golan was one of the founders of the Israel Women’s Network and presently is on the executive of the Israel Association for Feminist Research and Gender Studies and of the Israel Association for Women’s Health. Formerly on the Board of Directors of the Israel Museum, she is also a member of the Board of the Sharett Institute of Hadassah Hospital. A member of the government appointed public [Zameret] committee on religious-secular relations, she was appointed to the President’s Council on Religious-Secular Relations (Yahad). She is also on the board of Keshev, the Association for the Protection of Democracy in Israel. Dr. Golan was the recipient of the 1995 New Israel Fund Alice Shalvi Award for Women in Leadership and was awarded the Gleitsman Foundation Activist Prize in 1999. She is in the leadership of both Meretz and Shalom Achshav and a founding member of the Jerusalem Link (Bat Shalom). Professor Golan is the author of eight books and innumerable articles on Soviet foreign policy and on Eastern Europe, including a recent works on Russia and Iran and Iraq as well works on the Arab-Israeli Conflict and on women and politics. She has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy both in Washington, DC as well as the Rand Corporation, University of California, Berkeley and UCLA, Cornell, Wellesley College, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London. She is an international fellow of the Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life of Brandeis University and has been a MacArthur Foundation and a Ford Foundation Fellow. Professor Golan received her B.A. from Brandeis Univeristy, M.A (equivalent). from the Sorbonne, and her PhD. From the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Golan immigrated to Israel in 1966 and lived in Jerusalem until moving to Ra’anana in 1999. She is the widow of the late Dr. David Gild, mother of four and grandmother of three.