Professor David Peimer
Contemporary Israeli Thinkers: Yuval Noah Harari
Summary
Yuval Noah Harari is one of the most respected and renowned thinkers in the world today and author of the bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011). In this lecture, we will look at some of his ideas on the topics he writes on and examine the reasons for his popularity.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a Professor of Literature, Film and Theatre in the UK. He has worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, New York University (Global Division) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing in New York, UK, Berlin, EU Parliament (Brussels), Athens, Budapest, Zululand and more. He has most recently directed Dame Janet Suzman in his own play, Joanna’s Story, at London Jewish Book Week. He has published widely with books including: Armed Response: Plays from South Africa, the digital book, Theatre in the Camps. He is on the board of the Pinter Centre (London), and has been involved with the Mandela Foundation, Vaclav Havel Foundation and directed a range of plays at Mr Havel’s Prague theatre.
Absolutely. And yeah, he’s Jewish. And also, I mean, some of his family members were in one of the kibbutzim that was attacked and some of them were killed in the Hamas massacre. So he has a very direct personal connection to October the seventh horror. And he absolutely connects to Jewish religious in a secular way, I guess. But he absolutely considers completely Jewish and Israeli as well.
That’s a great question. More a sociologist than an historian. I think he would call himself an historian, but an historian in the broad renaissance sense of the word influenced by art, culture, literature, biology, science, medicine, anthropology, architecture, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I would say a historian with that broad, it’s a terrible word, but the contemporary academic word is interdisciplinary. But that broad open mind to see connections. I think that’s how I’d prefer to say it. That the more narrow-minded kind of scholarly approach, often pushed and demanded through publication is pushed today still I think.