Philip Wexler joins Israeli institute

Wexler will take a two-year leave from the Warner faculty to pursue his research at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel. The institute, founded in 1976, is an interdisciplinary advanced research center in Judaic studies. He'll join distinguished American and Israeli scholars in Jerusalem to pursue his research interests in the traditions of Jewish thought and their relation to social theory and education.

Provost Charles Phelps has appointed Raffaella Borasi, the Frederica Warner Professor of Education and a faculty member since 1985, as acting dean. A committee will be appointed to conduct a national search for Wexler's permanent successor.

"The University is, of course, extremely grateful to Dean Wexler for all of his administrative efforts over the past decade--including, significantly, serving as the first presiding dean in the newly renamed Warner School and helping the school to map out its direction in that new era," Phelps said.

Wexler, a faculty member since 1979, became dean in 1989. His research addresses fundamental questions about what education is and what its role in society should be. His books include Holy Sparks: Social Theory, Education and Religion; Social Analysis of Education: After the New Sociology; Critical Social Psychology; The Sociology of Education: Beyond Equality; and Becoming Somebody: Toward a Social Psychology of School.

Borasi, who chairs the school's Program in Teaching and Curriculum, is a mathematics education researcher who has won five National Science Foundation grants in 11 years to study and promote ways of improving mathematics instruction.

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