Professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University, and holds the Zalman and Sima Weinberg chair in Social Stratification and Inequality. He also serves as the president of the Israeli Sociology Society, heads the Education Policy Program at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel and is a member of the Sociological Research Association. He was previously a professor at the European University Institute, located in Florence. His main areas of research and teaching are educational stratification processes, education policy, occupational stratification, Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, marriage markets and research methods. Professor Shavit holds a PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (U.S.), received in 1983.