Smadar Lavie is a Mizrahi U.S.-Israeli anthropologist, author, and activist. She specializes in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, emphasizing issues of race, gender and religion. Lavie is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Davis,^[1] and a visiting scholar at the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley.^[2] Lavie received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (1989) and spent nine years as assistant and associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} She authored The Poetics of Military Occupation (UC Press, 1990), receiving the 1990 Honorable Mention of the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing,^[8] and Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Berghahn Books 2014,^[9] University of Nebraska Press 2018^[10]) receiving the 2015 Honorable Mention of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award Competition.^[11] Wrapped in the Flag of Israel's first edition was also one of the four finalists in the 2015 Clifford Geertz Book Award Competition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.^[12] She also co-edited Creativity/Anthropology (Cornell UP, 1993) and Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity (Duke UP, 1996). Lavie won the American Studies Association's 2009 Gloria Anzaldúa Prize for her article, “Staying Put: Crossing the Palestine-Israel Border with Gloria Anzaldúa,”^[13] published in Anthropology and Humanism (2011).^[14] In 2013, Smadar Lavie won the “Heart at East” Honor Plaque for lifetime service to Mizraḥi communities in Israel-Palestine.^{[15][16][17][18]}

Lavie received her BA in Social Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1980 (Majors: Sociology and Social Anthropology; Minors: Medieval Islamic Civilization, Musicology).^[19] Lavie received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 and was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award from the Middle East Studies Association for her dissertation titled, "The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule"^[20] which was later published by the University of California Press.^[21]

In 1990, Lavie became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, where she was promoted to an Associate Professorship in 1994.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} Professor Lavie held visiting professorships at Diablo Valley College (1984), U.C. Berkeley's Fall Freshman Program (1985–89), Stanford (1994), Beit Berl's College (2001–07),^[22] Macalester College (2007-2009)^[23] University of Virginia (2009–10)^[24] and the University of Minnesota (2010–12).^[25] Professor Lavie was the recipient of residential fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio (1993),^[4] Stanford Humanities Center (1993-1994)^[26] Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota (2010–11),^[27] Cento Incontri Umani Ascona (2011),^[28] the University College Cork (2010–16), the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, U. C. Berkeley (2013-2014),^[29] the Beatrice Bain Research Group, U. C. Berkeley (2012-2016),^[30] the Simon and Riva Spatz Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies, Dalhousie University (2018/19),^[31] and the Department of Ethnic Studies, U. C. Berkeley (2016-2020).^[32]

Lavie's academic work has been characterized by as "furthering Jewish-Israeli anthropological solidarity with Palestine and helping to break the taboo of interrogating Zionism in Israeli academia."^[33]

Lavie is a member of many political, feminist and anti-racist organizations. In 2013, she won the “Heart at East” Honor Plaque for committed excellence and lifetime service to the Mizrahi communities of Israel, given by a coalition of twenty NGOs working for equal distribution of cultural funds in Israel. 21 May.^{[15][16][17][18]}

Lavie was the Co-Founder and a member of CAFIOT (the Berkeley Committee for Academic Freedom in the Israeli Occupied Territories) from 1982 to 1989.^[34]

Lavie has served a number of roles at Ahoti (Sister) for Women in Israel, Israel's feminist of color movement.^[35] From January 2003 to January 2005, she served on the board of directors. From 2002 to 2003, she both served as the liaison to the New Israel Fund and was a member of the newsletter's editorial collective. From 2003-2004, she was the liaison to the FFIPP (Educational Network for Human Rights in Palestine/Israel).^[34][18]

Lavie co-founded the Coalition of Women for Mothers and Children and served as co-director of this coalition of many NGOs from 2003 to 2006.^[34]

Lavie has been a member of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition (MDR) since 2002. She served on the Culture Committee from 2002 to 2004, the Committee on Education and the Core Curriculum from 2002 to 2003, and was the MDR Representative to the Coalition of NGOs against Racism from 2005 to 2007.^[34]

Lavie has been an Advisory Board Member of Israel's Women's Parliament since 2002.^[34][36]

Lavie co-founded The Mizrahi-Palestinian Coalition Against Apartheid in Israeli Anthropology (CAAIA) and was a member from 2002-2008.^{[34][37][38][39][40][41][42]}