Omri Boehm
Can Europe really be strong when it retreats from the ideals of peace and universal human dignity on which it was rebuilt on after 1945?
More about Omri Boehm
Omri Boehm is an Israeli philosopher whose work explores universal human dignity, disobedience, and the limits of state sovereignty. His key tenet, based on his study of Kant and the Hebrew Bible, is that human dignity is universal, and that no nation, majority, or state may own or override it. After completing his compulsory military service in the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, he studied in Tel Aviv University's Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students and graduated with an M.A. in philosophy. In 2009, he earned a doctorate in philosophy at Yale University. Since 2010, he has been based at the New School for Social Research in New York, where he now chairs the philosophy department.
In his first book, The Binding of Isaac: A Religious Model of Disobedience, he introduced the theme that would become central to his work: the idea that human dignity and moral responsibility require refusing power rather than obeying it. In 2024, he received the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his book Radical Universalism.
Omri Boehm has become one of the most contested voices on Israel. In his book Haifa Republic, he proposes a shared state for Israelis and Palestinians, and he has strongly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the US-Israeli war on Iran. In 2025, he was disinvited from giving the memorial speech on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald after protests by the Israeli embassy.
As a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow, Boehm is completing a book that turns his philosophical argument toward Europe. As leaders call for greater power, he argues that Europe cannot become stronger by abandoning the universal commitments on which its post-war order was built. He holds that human dignity and international law must be understood not as restraints on political strength, but as conditions for it. The European project, he argues, is viable only as a normative cosmopolitan undertaking.
Resumé
1979 Born in Haifa, Israel, and raised in Gilon, Galilee
1997–2000 Military service, Shin Bet (Israeli internal security service)
2000–2003 Tel Aviv University, Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students, M.A. in Philosophy
2007 Publication: The Binding of Isaac: A Religious Model of Disobedience (Continuum)
2009 PhD in Philosophy, Yale University; dissertation: Kant's Critique of Spinoza
2010 Postdoctoral fellow, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich
2010–present Associate Professor and chair of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, New York
2014 Publication: Kant's Critique of Spinoza (Oxford University Press)
2020 Publication: Israel. Eine Utopie (German edition)
2021 English edition: Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel (New York Review Books)
2022 Publication: Radikaler Universalismus. Jenseits von Identität (Propyläen); English edition: Radical Universalism
2023 Shortlisted for the Deutscher Sachbuchpreis (Radikaler Universalismus)
2024 Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (February–July)
2024 Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (awarded 20 March, Gewandhaus; Laudation by Eva Illouz)
2024 Publications: Der bestirnte Himmel über mir. Ein Gespräch über Kant (with Daniel Kehlmann, Propyläen); Die Realität der Ideale (Propyläen; English: The Reality of Ideals)
2026 Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow, Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin
Omri Boehm's Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship
International Law and Europe’s Future: Defending Idealism in an Age of Power
As a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow, Omri Boehm is examining what happens when international politics turns away from universal principles and back toward sovereignty, national interest, and power. At a moment when international law is increasingly dismissed as naïve idealism, he is developing a philosophical and political defense of the opposite proposition: that peace, human dignity, and a rules-based international order are not luxuries of a safer age, but conditions for security in an interdependent world.
Defending ideals against the new realism
At the center of Omri Boehm’s fellowship is a book-length critique of contemporary political realism. He argues that realism is not simply a neutral description of how the world works. By treating sovereign power as the ultimate political fact, it risks becoming an ideology of power itself. Omri Boehm wants to recover peace as a serious political ideal, one from which laws and institutions can be derived even when peace itself remains out of reach. His starting point is the post-war order built after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, when human dignity and international law became central political principles.
Can Europe be strong with “less morality”?
Boehm intends to apply that argument directly to Europe. His central question is whether calls for a stronger Europe can be coherent when they are coupled with a retreat from moral and universal commitments. He argues that the European project is inherently post-national, though not anti-national, and can only remain strong as a cosmopolitan undertaking. During his fellowship, he will also explore a growing challenge to that order: how the memory of the Holocaust and the memory of colonial domination, once important foundations for universal law, increasingly collide in contemporary politics. Alongside his writing, Boehm plans to bring these questions into dialogue with policymakers, academics, and the wider public in Germany and Europe.