Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch
Associate, International Security Program
Contact:
Email: michal_ben-josef_hirsch@hks.harvard.edu
Experience
Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is an Associate of the Belfer Center's International Security Program and Lecturer in Politics and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University.
She was an International Security Program Research Fellow from 2007–2009. She holds a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Political Science from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her dissertation, entitled Setting the Record Straight: The International Norm of Truth-Seeking, develops a Constructivist model for the emergence and spreading of international norms in order to explain the worldwide prevalence of truth and reconciliation commissions. Her explanation focuses on the role of international agents in the framing and the institutionalization of the truth-seeking principle. It also finds that as this norm spreads, states are increasingly motivated to constitute their own truth commissions in order to establish a benign image and gain prestige in the international system.
Her publications include "From Taboo to the Negotiable: The Israeli New Historians and the Changing Representation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 5, No. 2, June 2007, and "Agents of Truth and Justice: Truth Commissions and the Transitional Justice Epistemic Community," in Volker Heins and David Chandler (eds.), Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy: Pitfalls, Possibilities and Paradoxes (London: Routledge, 2007).
Michal's research interests include international relations theory with a focus on the role of ideas and norms in world politics, U.S. foreign policy, conflict resolution, historical justice and memory, transitional justice, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
