Life
Safran was born in Cairo in 1925 to Joseph and Jeanne (Abadi) Safran, parents of oriental Jewish heritage. He married Anita Balicka on June 9, 1955 and had three daughters — Abigail, Nina, and Elizabeth.
Safran worked on a kibbutz in 1946 and fought as a lieutenant in Israel's War of Independence, also known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After the armistice was signed in 1949, he moved to the United States in 1950 and attended Brandeis University, graduating with a B.A. in 1954, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1958.
He remained at Harvard to teach government for two years and then worked as a research fellow at the university's Center for Middle East Studies. He became director of the Center for Middle East Studies and was also at that time an adviser to the White House on Middle East issues. He was a professor in Harvard's Government department until his retirement in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Nadav Safran
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