Azar Gat

Azar Gat (born 1959 in Haifa, Israel) is a researcher and author on military history. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University (1999–2003).

Professor Gat has a BA from the University of Haifa (1975-8), an MA from Tel Aviv University (1979–83), and his PhD from the University of Oxford (1984-6).

He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany (Freiburg), a Fulbright Fellow in the USA (Yale), a British Council Scholar in Britain (Oxford), and a Visiting Fellow at the Mershon Center, The Ohio State University.

He is also a Major (res.) in the Israeli army.

He was Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University (1999–2003), is the founder and head of the Executive Master's Program in Security and Diplomacy, and is the incumbent of the Ezer Weitzman Chair for National Security.

Professor Gat is known for taking an extremely wide view of warfare incorporating viewpoints from ethology, evolution, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, archaeology, history, historical sociology, and political science. An example is "The Human Motivational Complex: Evolutionary Theory And The Causes Of Hunter-Gatherer Fighting." This paper is cited in "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War".

Gat's views on war are similar to those of Steven A. LeBlanc.

Publications

• The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford UP, 1989)
• The Development of Military Thought: The...... ...
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