Rouhana was born in Isifiya, Mount Carmel, above Haifa to a Palestinian family who were citizens of the state of Israel. He grew up there and was educated in the Israeli school system. He is trilingual, fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. He completed his BA in Psychology and Statistics at the University of Haifa, his MA in Psychology at the University of Western Australia, and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Wayne State University. As part of his graduate work, he spent three years at Harvard University, writing his dissertation under the mentorship of Dr. Herbert Kelman, and, later, two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow. With Kelman, he worked on an approach to conflict resolution called the problem-solving workshop. Rouhana and Kelman later pioneered a new approach that built on the problem-solving workshop called the continuing workshop. Informed by a socio-psychological approach, the continuing workshop features regular intensive meetings between high-ranking non-official individuals over a long period of time. The meetings are designed to facilitate constructive interaction between opposing parties in an effort to advance jointly formulated ideas on how to address major issues of dispute in a given conflict. While at Harvard, Rouhana was a founding member of PICAR, a Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution that was based at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs until 2003, and its Chair of Academic Programs. He also served as Co-Chair of the Seminar on International Conflict at the center.
Career
Before his position at Fletcher, Rouhana was the Henry Hart Rice Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and Director of Point of View, SCAR's international research and retreat center in Mason Neck, VA. Prior to that, he was an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University. Appointments previous to this included teaching positions at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, Boston College, and An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. At Fletcher, Rouhana teaches courses on international negotiation, protracted social conflict, and reconciliation and transitional justice. Current research interests include collective identity and democratic citizenship in multiethnic states, the questions of reconciliation and multicultural citizenship, transitional justice, international negotiations, and the impact of the fusion of religion and nationalism on the comparative dynamics of various protracted conflicts.
Books
Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict
