David Menashri

David Menashri was born in 1944

David Menashri was born in Tehran, Iran, on October 28, 1944. He moved to Israel with his family in 1949 and grew up in Rishon LeZion. He is married to Gila, a high school teacher, and they live in Ness Ziona.

He earned his first degree in Middle Eastern and general history at Tel Aviv University, then served in the Intelligence Corps. He continued his graduate studies there and spent two years researching in Iran before the 1979 revolution. He received his doctorate in 1982 for a study of higher education in modern Iran.

He taught at Tel Aviv University and worked at the Dayan Center, studying Iranian politics, religion and Shia political Islam. He founded the first Israeli chair for Iranian studies in 1997, chaired his department from 1996 to 2000, and later served as Dean of Special Programs. He was a visiting scholar at universities including Princeton, Cornell, Chicago, Yale and Oxford.

He retired from Tel Aviv University in 2011 and became professor emeritus. From 2011 to 2015 he was President of the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan. He has also been active in groups such as the Pugwash Conferences and the Iranian Jewish Federation in Israel.