Avishai Margalit Discusses Compromises and Rotten Compromises

Albert Einstein is credited with the warning: "Beware of rotten compromises." Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, will attempt to explain and support this principle in his talk, Compromises and Rotten Compromises. The lecture will take place on Wednesday, November 19, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute's campus.

Professor Margalit will discuss how we should be willing to compromise a great deal to achieve peace, even at the expense of justice, but that we should never settle for "rotten compromises," even for the sake of peace. Margalit will expand on two historical examples: the Munich Agreement and the agreement on slavery that enabled the American Constitution.

Margalit joined the faculty of the Institute in 2006 as the George F. Kennan Professor. He is one of the foremost thinkers and commentators on the contemporary human condition, the moral issues of our time and current problems facing Western societies. While trained as a philosopher, Margalit is highly regarded for his profound and cogent observations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the broader struggle between Islam and the West. As the author of Idolatry (with Moshe Halbertal, 1992), The Decent Society (1996), Views in Reviews: Politics and Culture in the State of the Jews (1998), The Ethics of Memory (2002) and Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (with Ian Buruma, 2004), Margalit has transformed philosophical perspectives on a range of political and societal issues. Margalit's forthcoming book Compromise and Rotten Compromise will be published by Princeton University Press.

Margalit received his education at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he was awarded a B.A. in philosophy and economics in 1963, an M.A. in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1970, both in philosophy. Margalit joined The Hebrew University as a lecturer in 1970, and was named Schulman Professor of Philosophy in 1998. He remained on the faculty until 2006, when he joined the Institute. Among his other positions, he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University (1974-75); Visiting Professor, Free University of Berlin (1984-85); Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford University (1979-80) and St. Antony's College, Oxford University (1990); Fellow, Max Planck Institute (1984-85); Rockefeller Fellow, the Center for Human Values, Princeton University (1995-96); and Senior Fellow, Global Law Program, New York University (2004-05).

Among his honors, Margalit delivered the inaugural lectures at Oxford University as the first Bertelsman Professor in 2001, delivered the Tanner Lecture at Stanford University in 2005 and presented the Thomas Morus Lecture at Radboud University in Amsterdam in 2008. He received the Spinoza Lens Prize of the International Spinoza Foundation in 2001 and the 2007 EMET Prize in the humanities (philosophy) from the A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art and Culture in Israel.

For further information about this event, which is free and open to the public, please call (609) 734-8175, or visit the Public Events page on the Institute website, www.ias.edu.