Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; in the past, he has served as department head and dean of the university's Faculty of Social Sciences. He has held visiting professor posts at the University of Toronto, Stony Brook University (NY) and at the London School of Economics. His main areas of research are media and deviance, social control, religion and state, discourse analysis and social structure, collective memory and myth, science fiction and the structure of reality in combat films. Prof. Ben-Yehuda holds a Ph.D. in sociology, received from the University of Chicago in 1976.

Served as member of the committee until 2012.