Yoram Hazony

Hazony was born in Rehovot, Israel, in 1964; his family moved to New Jersey for his father’s academic work at PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, and he grew up there.⁠[1]

At Princeton University he and fellow student Daniel Polisar co-founded the conservative campus journal The Princeton Tory. He later pursued a doctorate at Rutgers, writing his dissertation on the political theory of the Book of Jeremiah.⁠[2]

He earned a B.A. in East Asian Studies at Princeton University in 1986 and a Ph.D. in political theory at Rutgers University in 1993.⁠[3]

From 1991 to 1994 he was an adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s opposition leader; in 1991 he was a member of the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference. He also served on the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post.⁠[4]

In 1994 he founded the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute, with fellow Princeton alumni Daniel Polisar and Joshua Weinstein. By 2008 it had grown from a think tank with a staff of three to an institute with a $10 million annual budget and a staff of 100, funded mostly by the Tikva Fund created by the late philanthropist Zalman Bernstein.⁠[5]

He was president of the Shalem Center from 1994 to 2002 and its provost from 2005 to 2012; its Shalem Press published Western philosophy in Hebrew translation and Azure magazine, and in 2013 Shalem formally became Shalem College.⁠[3]

In 2000 he published The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, criticizing post-Zionist tendencies in Israel’s academia, courts and among leading writers; reviews were mixed, one likening its standard to that set by Soviet ideologues for approved writers.⁠[2]

In 2012 Cambridge University Press published his book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, with his affiliation given as the Shalem Center. It proposes a new framework for reading the Bible, arguing that biblical authors used narrative and prophetic oratory to advance universal arguments about ethics, political philosophy and metaphysics.⁠[6]

Reviewer Jonathan Yudelman wrote that the book rejects the opposition between reason and revelation and argues that the biblical authors, like Parmenides or Plato, built a philosophical worldview; he found it ambitious but unevenly convincing.⁠[7]

In 2013 he founded the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and became its president; it hosts researchers from Israel and abroad for study programs and seminars.⁠[1]

The institute seeks a renewed encounter with the foundational ideas of Judaism, welcomes Christian and other non-Jewish scholars, and is located in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighborhood.⁠[8]

Cambridge University Press published the second edition of his God and Politics in Esther, with his affiliation given as the Herzl Institute. Through the story of the Book of Esther it explores politics and faith in an era when prophecy has fallen silent and miracles have ceased, and Jewish politics depends on the boldness and belief of individuals.⁠[9]

He recalls that in February 2016 a professor friend who studies nationalism urged him to set aside his book on the Bible and write about nationalism, and he wrote his first article on it; that December he and Ofir Haivry organized a conference in New York to promote national conservatism.⁠[10]

In 2018 he published The Virtue of Nationalism, which was soon described as the closest thing the national conservative movement had to an intellectual manifesto.⁠[11]

Published by Basic Books, it argues that nationalism, in which nations chart their own course and pursue their own interests, is preferable to imperialism, which unites mankind as far as possible under a single regime; it traces the idea of national independence to the Hebrew Bible and criticizes thinkers such as John Locke, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.⁠[12]

John Fonte predicted the book would become a classic, crediting it with identifying the 21st century’s main fault line between advocates of self-governing nations and forces promoting supranational global governance; his only serious disagreement concerned Hazony’s reading of John Locke and natural rights.⁠[13]

Daniel P. Schmidt and Michael E. Hartmann praised the book as cogent, while saying that hard questions about how its nationalism would work amid increased migration, and whether assimilation is possible, should be considered.⁠[14]

Matt McManus, who describes himself as an internationalist, called the book the most interesting and compelling articulation of the nationalist case so far, one critics must take seriously, but faulted some passages for “needless hyperbole” that conflates different historical and philosophical movements.⁠[15]

In 2019 he set up the Edmund Burke Foundation, whose main role has been holding National Conservatism conferences in the United States, Belgium, Italy and the UK.⁠[16]

The first conference took place at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, hosted by Hazony and David Brog, with speakers including Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, Tucker Carlson and John Bolton; the hosts stressed that they had barred white supremacists. Constanze Stelzenmüller criticized the movement for preaching social cohesion, national renewal and restraint while celebrating forces that undermine those aims.⁠[17]

That year The Virtue of Nationalism won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Conservative Book of the Year Award.⁠[18]

In 2022 he published Conservatism: A Rediscovery.⁠[19]

Peter Berkowitz argued that the book redefines conservatism by making Christianity the basis of American public life, misrepresents John Locke and Enlightenment liberalism, and departs from Edmund Burke’s moderation. The book sets out six premises of conservatism, stressing that individuals are born into families, tribes and nations.⁠[20]

Henry George, by contrast, called the book clear and eloquent and a much-needed vision of conservatism in a society where conservation seems increasingly impossible.⁠[21]

David Polansky saw the book, together with The Virtue of Nationalism, as a project to revive communitarianism, but criticized it for treating liberalism and nationalism as diametrically opposed and for not addressing popular sovereignty.⁠[22]

On episode #256 he debated national conservatism versus individualism with Yaron BrookYaron BrookYaron Brook is an Israeli-born American writer, commentator and podcast host and a former finance professor who from the early 2000s led the Ayn Rand Institute, which promotes Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, and later became its chairman of the board; with Don Watkins he co-wrote books including Free Market Revolution and Equal Is Unfair, and he hosts The Yaron Brook Show.Open the full entry.⁠[23]

The Edmund Burke Foundation issued “National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles,” drafted by nine people including Hazony, Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher and R.R. Reno. Sohrab Ahmari and an open letter signed by figures including Rowan Williams criticized it from different angles.⁠[24]

In late May 2023 the foundation held a three-day conference at London’s Emmanuel Centre, with speakers including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman; Hazony praised Britain’s 300 years of protectionism. David Aaronovitch wrote critically of the movement.⁠[16]

J.D. Vance addressed the London conference remotely. Peter Geoghegan described the foundation as dedicated to strengthening the principles of national conservatism and Hazony as advocating strong national institutions and traditional social forms.⁠[25]

Belgian police shut down the foundation’s NatCon conference at the Claridge event center in Brussels on public order grounds after the owners of two earlier venues had withdrawn when protesters vowed to disrupt it. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and a spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak both objected to the shutdown.⁠[26]

The order had been issued by district mayor Emir Kir; the organizers challenged it with the support of ADF International, Belgium’s highest court overturned it that night, and the conference continued, with speakers including Viktor Orbán.⁠[27]

In an interview he said the movement stresses national independence, national interests and national and religious traditions; he said the obstruction in Brussels showed left-wing governments trying to keep national conservatives from competing democratically for public opinion.⁠[10]

In June 2025 Hachette Book Group released an updated paperback edition of The Virtue of Nationalism with a new preface and afterword by the author.⁠[19]

In 2025 the conference returned to Washington, D.C.; earlier editions had been held in London, Rome, Orlando and Brussels.⁠[28]

He is president of the Herzl Institute and chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, and has co-edited The Question of God’s Perfection with Dru Johnson and The Revelation at Sinai with Gil Student and Alex Sztuden. He is married with nine children and lives in Jerusalem.⁠[18]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.yoramhazony.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/yhazony (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

Herzl Institute: Official website: https://herzlinstitute.org/en/ (opens in a new window)⁠[29]