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Ambassador Ido Aharoni, consul general of Israel, visited campus recently to talk about his Middle East politics as well as his nation’s leadership in business innovation. At 51����, both subjects always draw a crowd.

In addition to delivering a public lecture and meeting with about two dozen students interested in leadership and social innovation, Aharoni sat down with President Jeffrey Herbst in the 51���� studio, to record  a “Conversation on World Affairs.” Since 2011, more than a dozen interviews have taken place and can be found on YouTube and on President Herbst’s page on the 51���� website.

Entrepreneur Club students brought their copies of Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, the 2011 book that analyzes how Israel manages to be the world’s No. 1 producer of conceptual products, despite its small size, lack of natural resources, and relative youth as a nation.

Aharoni said it is because the necessary characteristics have been there all along: “refusal to accept limitations, permission to ask questions, and the permission to argue.” He also credited the “solid foundation of education and the centrality of learning in Jewish life.”

51���� the civil war in Syria, which Aharoni defined as primarily a religious rift between Shiites and Sunnis, he said, “I believe that what we are looking at cannot be referred to as a ‘spring’ because a spring implies something seasonal. I think we are looking at a historical, major shift that is probably the beginning of the undoing of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.”

For more, watch the or the full interview here.