Anbessa Teferra (Photo via jbhe.com)
Tel Aviv University in Israel recently hired its first Black professor.
Anbessa Teferra was appointed to the position of senior lecturer of Semitic languages at Tel Aviv University on Aug. 3, The Journal of Black in Higher Education reported.
Teferra, an immigrant from Ethiopia, is the first Black to be granted status as a senior lecturer at an Israeli university, the publication reported. Approximately 2.2 percent of the population of Israel is of Ethiopian descent.
Teferra was born in Ethiopia in 1962 and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in linguistics at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. JBHE reported. He served on the faculty of that institution for five years.
Teferra immigrated to Israel in 1989 where he studied at Tel Aviv University, according to his profile on the institution’s website. Teferra earned his Ph.D. at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, becoming the first Ethiopian immigrant in Israel to earn a doctoral degree.
According to his profile, Teferra previously taught courses such as Introduction to Language and Linguistics, General Phonetics and Phonology, Amharic for Beginners, Advanced Amharic, Sidaama for Beginners, Sidaama for Advanced Students, Topics in the Morphology and Syntax of Ethiopian Langauges.