Prof. Michael (Mousa) Karayanni. Photo: Wikipedia.

The first-ever Arab Israeli has been appointed as the dean of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the institution announced.

Prof. Michael (Mousa) Karayanni, from a Christian Greek Orthodox family in Kafr Yasif in the Galilee, was unanimously voted to the position by the faculty last Wednesday, to replace the outgoing dean, Prof. Yuval Shani, who has held the post for the past four years.

Karayanni, 52 — a married father-of-three who resides in the joint Jewish-Arab village of Neve Shalom/Wahat el-Salam between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — has held the faculty’s Bruce W. Wayne Chair in International Law since 2010.

An expert in civil law, private international law and issues of law and multiculturalism, Karayanni will assume his new post on October 1 this year, making him the faculty’s 22nd dean.

Karayanni was educated at Bar-Ilan University, George Washington University, the Hebrew University and the University of Pennsylvania. He served as academic director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights (2004-2006); vice-dean of the Faculty of Law (2006-2008); and director of the Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law (2008 – 2012).

He has a long list of grants and awards, among them the Allan Bronfman Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in the Humanities and Law (2000), the Zeltenr Award for Young Scholars (2002) and the Rector’s Prize (2011).

He has held visiting-scholar positions at the University of Melbourne, Stanford, Yale, Princeton and the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg.

His most recent book, Conflicts in a Conflict: A Conflict of Laws Study on Israel and the Palestinian Territories, was published by Oxford University Press in 2014.