Naomi Chazan

Naomi Chazan
Date of birth	18 November 1946 (1946-11-18)
Place of birth	Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine
Knessets	13, 14, 15
Party	Meretz
Ministerial posts (current in bold)	Deputy Speaker of the Knesset

Naomi Chazan (Hebrew: נעמי חזן‎ (1946) is an Israeli academic and politician. Chazan is president of the New Israel Fund.

Biography

Naomi Chazan (née Harman) was born on November 18, 1946, in Jerusalem. Her parents were Avraham and Zina Harman. Her father was later Israeli ambassador to the United States, while her mother worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as a member of Knesset between 1969 and 1974. Chazan studied at Columbia University, earning a BA and MA, before attending the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she gained a PhD. She later headed the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the university.

Political career

In 1985 she was a member of the Israeli delegation to the UN Conference on Women in Nairobi, and in 1995 to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She served as president of the Israeli branch of the Society for International Development, was a founder and member of the board of the Israel Women's Network, and has served as Vice President of the International Association of Political Science.

In 1992 she was elected to the Knesset on the Meretz list. She retained her seat in the 1996 elections and was made a Deputy Speaker. She was re-elected again in 1999 and remained a Deputy Speaker until losing her seat in the 2003 elections.

Published works

Chazan is the author, co-author and editor of eight books and 56 articles in academic journals on comparative (especially African) and Israeli politics.

• An Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics: Managing Political Recession, 1969-1982 (Westview Press, 1983, ISBN 086531439X)
• Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty (Westview Press, 1986, ISBN 0865313695), with Deborah Pellow
• Coping with Africa’s Food Crisis (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988, ISBN 0931477840), with Timothy M. Shaw
• The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Westview Press, 1988, ISBN 0813309689), with Donald Rothchild
• Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988, ISBN 0333468384), with Robert Mortimer, John Ravenhill, and Donald Rothchild; reprinted 1992 (ISBN 1555872832) and 1999 (ISBN 155587679X)
• Irredentism and International Politics (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991, ISBN 1555872212), edited volume
• Civil Society and the State in Africa (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994, ISBN 155587360X), edited with John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild
• The Early State in African Perspective: Culture, Power and Division of Labor (Brill Academic Publishers, 1997, ISBN 9004083553), edited with S.N. Eisenstadt and Michel Abitbol