Chair of the Humanities Division of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities from 2007 to 2013. Professor Friedmann formerly served as the Dean of the Humanities Faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and headed the Institute of Asian and African Studies as well as the Arabic Language and Literature Department. Professor Friedmann has been involved in the study, research and teaching of Arabic and Islam for decades. He has been as a visiting professor at leading universities in the United States and is the editor of Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, a professional journal.
Professor Friedmann holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Arabic language and literature and in the history of Islamic countries, both received from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1959, 1962), and a PhD degree in Islamic Studies from McGill University (Canada), received in 1966.
He is the recipient of the 2003 Landau Prize in the Humanities.