Dr. Yoav Fromer

Dr. Yoav Fromer is a senior faculty member in the Department of English and American Studies. He is also the founding director of the Center for the Study of the United States at Tel Aviv University and a fellow in the School of Government and Diplomacy. He was a Visiting Lecturer at Yeshiva University in New York (2016-2020).

Yoav is a graduate of Columbia University (Magna Cum Laude) and holds a Ph.D in Politics and History from The New School for Social Research in New York (with Honors). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society.

An intellectual historian, literary scholar and political theorist, Dr. Fromer's research explores the relationship between politics and culture and focuses primarily on Twentieth-Century American Liberalism and the Left, Conservatism, and American Foreign Policy, with an emphasis on U.S.-Israel relations.

He teaches an array of interdisciplinary courses about American culture, history, politics and foreign policy. These include introductory courses to American Literature and American Studies, and more advanced courses and seminars about the cultural foundations of U.S.-Israel Relations, American Conservatism, The Vietnam War and the Sixties experience, and Jewish America. 

Yoav is currently at work on several new research projects. These include: 

• Exploring the cultural foundations of U.S.-Israel relations: How has Israel's shifting image and representation in American culture since the 1980s contributed to U.S-Israel relations?
• A history of the AFL-CIO's relationship with Israel (1948-1988) that focuses on how Organized Labor in the U.S. used its relations with Israeli labor and Histadrut to help formulate the "Special Relationship" between the U.S. and Israel.
• A study of how literature informed and influenced the political imagination (i.e. politics and legislation) of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Dr. Fromer's academic research has been published, among other places, in leading journals like Review of Politics, Modern Intellectual History, American Jewish History and Journal of American Studies. His latest book, The Moderate Imagination: The Political Thought of John Updike and the Decline of New Deal Liberalism (2020) was published by the University Press of Kansas. He recently published an edited volume of essays, The Americanization of the Israeli Right (co-edited with Ilan Peleg).  

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Fromer served as a senior editor and commentator for the Israeli Daily Newspaper Yediot Aharonot and edited its op-ed pages for many years. He regularly writes commentary for American media outlets such as the Washington Post, Dissent, Newsweek, New Republic and Tablet Magazine.

• Post-1945 American culture and politics (with an emphasis on the relationship between politics and literature). This includes the development and transformations of the American Left, the rise of the Right and modern conservatism, Cold War Liberalism, and the legacies of the Sixties.
• The cultural origins of the U.S.-Israel relations (and the way literature, film, popular culture, and labor relations helped to construct and shape them). 
• The New York Intellectuals and Jewish American intellectual history in the 1930s-1960s.
• The Americanization of Israeli society and culture (and the "Israelization" of American politics).

Books

• The Moderate Imagination: The Political Thought of John Updike and the Decline of New Deal Liberalism
• The Americanization of the Israeli Right (Co-Edited with Ilan Peleg)

Academic Journals

• "The 'Other' Pro-Israel Lobby: The AFL-CIO and Israel (1952–1960)"

        Modern American History 

• "Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Politics of Tragedy"

        Review of Politics  

• The Saddest Man I ever Knew": Ralph de Toledano and the Jewish Roots of American Conservatism 

​         American Jewish History 

• The Liberal Origins of John Updike's Literary Imagination    

        ​Modern Intellectual History 

• "A New Deal, a New Updike: The Decline of New Deal Liberalism in John Updike's "The Poorhouse Fair"                                       The Journal of American Studies 

• "The Inside-Outsider: John Updike as a New York Intellectual from Shillington, Pennsylvania.”     ​

        John Updike Review

Book Chapters in Edited Volumes

• "Israel's 'Obama Problem - and Ours': Importing American Neoconservatism to Israel, Duty Free." In The Obama Administration: Perceptions and Encounters Beyond America (London: Bloomsbury Academic, Forthcoming 2025).

• "‘Mail Chauvinism’: John Updike’s Fascination with the USPS and the Unrealizable Vision of American Community.” In Updike and Politics: New Considerations (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020).

Publications in the Press

Washington Post

• The Middle East doesn't lack democracy. It has too much.
• Why the American left gave up on political violence.
• Want to improve democracy? Abolish the secret ballot.
• Democrats Shouldn't Fear Sanders Talk of Revolution 

Dissent 

• The Israeli Right Ignores America 

Tablet Magazine

• Bibi's New Deal Power Grab

• How Israel is Being Framed

• Syria and the Failure of the Multicultural American Left

• Why Obama Should Read Trilling

הארץ

• כיצד התפתח הימין האמריקני

ידיעות אחרונות 

• דווקא האיש שלא האמין בשלום - הצליח להביא אותו. פרידה מהנרי קיסינג'ר
• הולדן קולפילד לנצח: כך הפך "התפסן בשדה השיפון" ליצירה על-זמנית
• אידיאולוגיה ביבוא ישיר מאמריקה
• מסיבת התה של בחריין
• ניקסון הישראלי 
• כסף זה לא הכל