Hebrew U. Appoints 1st Arab Woman Vice President

Mona Khoury-Kassabri was elected Vice President of Strategy and Diversity at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the first Arab woman to serve as a university vice president.

Khoury-Kassabri, who was elected on Wednesday by the university board of governors, will be responsible for broadening the university’s academic staff and student body with members from underrepresented communities in academia, including ultra-Orthodox Jews, Arabs, Ethiopians and people with disabilities.  She is also charged with will be charged with implementing the university’s strategic priorities, among them raising the social, economic and environmental impact of the university, increasing the cross-disciplinary efforts among the university’s six campuses and adapting teaching methods to the post-coronavirus period.

With the appointment, Hebrew University becomes the first Israeli university to establish a senior position to strengthen diversity and inclusion.

Khoury-Kassabri has been dean of the university’s Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare since 2018, and will hold that position until the end of the 2020-2021 academic year.

Khoury-Kassbari holds three degrees in social work from Hebrew University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago and was a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work. In 2014, she was appointed advisor to the president of Hebrew University to increase Arab access to higher education. Her areas of research are school violence, juvenile delinquency and cyberbullying.