Yuli Tamir

Yuli Tamir was born in 1954 in Tel Aviv

Yael "Yuli" Tamir was born in Tel Aviv in 1954. Her parents were Yehuda Tamir and Ada Borodovsky, and she was a grandniece of Dov Hoz. She attended Alliance High School in Ramat Aviv.

She earned a BA in biology and an MA in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1989 she received a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Oxford, supervised by Isaiah Berlin. Her academic work focuses on nationalism and its link to liberalism.

From 1989 to 1999 she taught philosophy at Tel Aviv University. She co-founded Peace Now in 1978, was active in Ratz and chaired the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Ehud Barak appointed her Minister of Immigrant Absorption in 1999.

She entered the Knesset in 2003 and served as Education Minister in Ehud Olmert's government from 2006 to 2009. She launched the New Horizon reform, and her term saw long teachers' strikes. Her approval of a textbook for Arab pupils that used the term nakba drew demands for her dismissal.

In 2010 she left the Knesset to become President of Shenkar College, a post she held until 2020. Since October 2020 she has been President of Beit Berl College.