Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and pursuit, are held
to aim at what is good. It stands to reason that this will be the concern of
that science which is the most sovereign and the most authoritative... and it is clear that this is the character of political science.

(Aristotle, The Book of Ethics, Chapter 1)

 

The department's story begins somewhere in the late 1930s, in the days when the Hebrew University was shaping its path. In those years, the field of political inquiry was developing as an independent and respected discipline throughout the world, and scholars here at the Chair for Social Thought, headed by Martin Buber and Richard Koebner, aspired to establish such a research-academic department at the Hebrew University. At the same time, the leaders of the Jewish Yishuv applied pressure for the establishment of a professional track at the university, whose purpose would be to provide focused training for the officialdom and leadership of the Zionist Yishuv institutions.

The struggles over the character of the future department, alongside the political events of the 1940s, somewhat delayed its establishment. In the end, the department was officially founded in 1949, headed by Professor Benjamin Akzin, and constituted the first department in the country in the field of political science.

Over the years, the founding generation dealt at length with the question of what the essence of the profession of studying the state actually is. Alongside these discussions, and alongside financial support both from the UN and from the state, a large, professional, living department developed, involved in the local and global arena. Since 2017, according to the Shanghai ranking, the study of politics at the Hebrew University – whose core is in the Department of Political Science – has been ranked a particularly prominent field of knowledge at the Hebrew University; in first place in Israel; among the twenty leading universities in the world that are not English-speaking; and in 40th, 49th place, or in places 50-75 out of all the universities in the world.

 From then until today, the department researches, examines and influences the various political phenomena, the institutions, the regime, the administration, the thought and the behaviour of citizens - as they occur throughout the world, while focusing on and going deeper into politics and the regime in the State of Israel. The department invests in enrichment activities, in lecturer-student forums, in guest lectures, and maintains a special track for outstanding students from the first stages of their studies, out of its conception of the students as the future generation of practice and research in the field. The study programme for the bachelor's degree is intended to impart theoretical and research tools for understanding, deepening and practice in the academic and political arena. The breadth of the field constitutes a basis for study and occupation in derived or adjacent fields such as international relations, economics, communication, law, business administration, sociology and the like.

The department offers a number of tracks for the master's degree: specialisations in Politics and Society in the Middle East, Political Thought, and Law, Government and Society. All the tracks, including master's studies without a particular specialisation, allow two options for the master's degree: with or without writing a thesis (except for the track in the Law, Government and Society specialisation, which is studied only in the theoretical format without a thesis). The Department of Political Science offers a study track for the doctoral degree (PhD) in the various fields of specialisation and/or a combination of them, under the guidance of the best researchers in the country.

 

* This section was written with the help of Ms. Keren Dinur.