Eugene Kontorovich, a former Plainsboro resident, presents “Say It Enough, It Still Isn’t True: Illegal Occupation, Settlements, Apartheid,” at Beth El Synagogue on Wednesday, March 28. “Everyone can be an advocate for Israel,” he says. “Learn how to speak on Israel’s behalf and counter claims made against Israel with three practical and effective communication tools.”
Kontorovich was born in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the USSR. His family came to the U.S. in 1977 when he was three. They moved to the Plainsboro area more than 20 years ago, and he graduated from WW-P High School in 1993.
During high school he was principally involved with “Pirate’s Eye,” the school’s newspaper, and was editor-in-chief at one point. “I wanted to be a journalist, and indeed was one in a prior career, working on the editorial pages of the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, and doing some freelancing,” he says. “But I wanted to develop some deeper expertise.”
He graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in 1996 and received his JD from University of Chicago Law School in 2001. A former assistant professor at George Mason University School of Law, he has been a professor at Northwestern University School of Law since 2007. His specialty is constitutional and international law and he has been called on to advise lawyers in historic piracy trials around the world.
He is currently a resident member of the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Social Science. At the Institute he is working on a book about what piracy teaches about the weakness of modern international law, hopefully to be published in 2013. The working title of his book is “Justice at Sea: Piracy and the Limits of International Criminal Law.”
“International law is one of a few fields I work in, the other being constitutional law,” says Kontorovich. “I see them both as part of a broader category of public law, law that regulates relationships between the government and individuals or between governments, as opposed to private law, which regulates relationships between people.”
He and his family are living in East Windsor during his time at IAS. Their children attend the Shalom Torah Academy in East Windsor. His father and stepmother also live in East Windsor. His mother and stepfather live in Princeton. His brothers are Alex, a math professor at Yale, and Aryeh, a computer science professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba. Their sister, Luba, is in business school at the University of Chicago.
“The Israel-Arab conflict is not my primary interest, but one of those with somewhat greater public relevance, and where the academy had developed a rather unchallenged and problematic orthodoxy over the past few decades,” says Kontorovich. “I did get married in Israel, but never lived there, and I don’t think my personal relationship is predictive of my academic positions, as many Israeli academics are the most vocal critics of the state.”
Speak Up for Israel, Beth El Synagogue, 50 Maple Stream Road, East Windsor. Wednesday, March 28, 7:30 p.m. “Say It Enough, It Still Isn’t True: Illegal Occupation, Settlements, Apartheid” presented by Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law. An expert on international criminal law and maritime piracy, he is currently a member at the Institute for Advanced Study. Register. 609-443-4454. www.bethel.net.
