KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Natan Sharansky is an author and intellectual, former Soviet dissident, and human rights activist. He spent nine years imprisoned by Soviet authorities and immigrated to Israel in 1996. Sharansky has held several ministerial positions in the Israeli government, including that of Deputy Prime Minister. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by USA in 2006. Among his various roles he serves as Chairman of Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.

SYMPOSIUM CO-CONVENER

Topic: Indigenous Narratives of Land and Sky - Modern and Ancient, Arctic Canada and The Land of Israel

Wayne Horowitz, Hebrew University, is an archeologist and academic specializing in ancient Near East and Assyriology. For the past decade Professor Horowitz has worked on a joint research program with the Gwich'in Tribal Council, Department of Culture and Heritage in the Northwest Territories, Canada, to protect and recover Gwich’in knowledge of stellar and other heavenly phenomena.

SYMPOSIUM CO-CONVENER

Topic: Antisemitism and the Hijacking of Indigeneity: the roots of the so-called “Māori View on Israel-Palestine”

Sheree Trotter is Maori (Te Arawa). She earned her PhD in history from the University of Auckland (Thesis: Zionism in New Zealand to 1948). In 2012 she co-founded the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation for whom she has interviewed seventy Holocaust survivors. Sheree completed an Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy scholars-in-residence course at University of Oxford in 2023. She is co-director of Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem.

Topic: The Use of Settler Colonialism to Deny Jewish Indigeneity in the Holy Land

Ilan Troen is Lopin Professor of Modern History Emeritus at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, Stoll Family Professor in Israel Studies Emeritus at Brandeis University, USA, and founding director of the Israel Studies centers at both institutions. He is Founding Editor of the journal Israel Studies, and 2023 recipient of the Association for Israel Studies “Lifetime Achievement Award.” His most recent book is Israel/Palestine in World Religions; Whose Promised Land?

Topic: The Denial of Jewish Peoplehood and Jewish Connection to the Land of Israel in Late-Soviet Propaganda 

Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism. She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities, a Research Fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and ISGAP, and a contributing writer at Tablet Magazine. She has published widely. Follow her on X @IzaTabaro.

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Gil Troy is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the JPPI - the global think tank of the Jewish people -- and the author, most recently, of "The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath: Facts, Figures, History" and "To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream."

Troy, a Distinguished Scholar in North American History at McGill University living in Jerusalem, is an award-winning American presidential historian and a leading Zionist thinker. Read more...

Topic: The Implications of Antisemites Defining the Jew: From Indigenity to Colonial Settler

Charles Asher Small (D.Phil, Oxon) is the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and the Director of the ISGAP-Woolf Institute Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination and Human Rights at the Woolf Institute, in association with St. Edmunds College, University of Cambridge. Charles is additionally a research fellow at St. Edmunds College.

Topic: Kyrgyz Epic Manas as a Historical source for Soviet Ethnographers in Soviet Nation Building Process

Kinduz Niiazova is originally from Kyrgyzstan. She completed BA and MA studies in Germany with a focus on Social Sciences, East European Studies and Jewish Culture. She is now a PhD Candidate at Tel Aviv University studying “Empire, Nationality, and Modernity in Soviet Kyrgyzstan: Nexus of Kyrgyz-Jewish Intellectuals and Formation of Kyrgyz Cultural Identity 1930-1970”.

Topic:  Did Jonah Find a Minyan? The Israelite Community at Nineveh

Jan Safford is a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University whose research topic is evidence for 'the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel' in documents in cuneiform script from the Neo-Assyria exile.  He is one of the leading scholars in the study of the Al-Yahudu archives from the time of the Babylonian exile.  Safford's research extends in time from the establishment of the first Judean and Israelite exilic communities outside of the Land of Israel down to and beyond the time of the return that we learn about from Ezra and Nehemiah.

Topic: Genealogy, Land and Story: A Māori Perspective

Brad Haami is an author and media creative involved in Māori storytelling in television, drama, cinema and museum exhibition formats. He is currently a lecturer and freelance author focusing on Māori history and knowledge.

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Karen Restoule is a Senior Fellow in Indigenous economy and governance at Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Canada's only truly national public policy think tank. Karen is a public affairs professional with Crestview Strategy. Previously, she served Indigenous leaders advancing innovative policy solutions to legacy challenges. She also led Ontario’s administrative justice system as a public sector executive. Read more...

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Shadi Khalloul is the President & Founder of ICAA NGO, an Israeli Aramaic Maronite from Kfar Birem, was born in Gush-Halav, near the border with Lebanon. He was the 1st Christian to become paratrooper officer in 1995. He has a degree in International Business and Finance from the University of Las Vegas. Shadi was recognized by PM Netanyahu for his success in encouraging Christians in Israel to join the IDF and fully integrate into Israeli Jewish society.