Yehuda Elkana (Hebrew: יהודה אלקנה‎; 16 June 1934 – 21 September 2012)[2] was a historian and philosopher of science, and a former president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

His family escaped the gas chambers when the Nazis transferred them to Austria as corvée labourers for the reconstruction of war-torn cities.

During his tenure at the Wissenschaftskolleg in 2009/10 he began to work on a global initiative to reform undergraduate university curricula, in order to tackle the problems he outlined in earlier public appearances.

Jahrhundert: Für eine neue Einheit von Lehre, Forschung und Gesellschaft", which was published in October 2012.

Describing himself as a "lifelong feminist", Elkana said that while he understood the furor over the incident as he felt that women are often treated unfairly, his decision was sound.

[10] In 1988, in an article published in Haaretz, Elkana challenged the role of memories of the Holocaust, which he called 'the central axis of our national experience,' in Israeli identity.

For Elkana, 'any philosophy of life nurtured solely or mostly by the Holocaust leads to disastrous consequences,' and Thomas Jefferson was correct in his view that democracy and worship of the past were incompatible.

While it may be the duty of the world to remember the Holocaust, he argued, 'we' must learn to forget, for the penetration of such memories deep within Israeli national consciousness, in his view, was the greatest threat to the state of Israel.

[11] Delivering the opening address, 'Einstein's Legacy', for Germany's Einstein Year (2005) celebrating the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis, Elkana remarked: I love Israel and feel a deep loyalty towards it, and hope for its continued existence, and at the same time I warn against strong nationalist tendencies which may endanger the democratic character of the state (I never accepted that there can be such a thing as a genuinely democratic Jewish state, nor can any other religion-based state be fully democratic) ... when I publicly called for 'The need to forget', against the political manipulation of the Holocaust in Israel (by right-wing and left-wing governments equally), and at the same time I oppose tendencies by some in Germany who wish to 'close the chapter' of the Holocaust, I do not think that I am being inconsistent ... Israel should leave to the individual the memory he or she wishes to keep up or even to cultivate, while Germany must continuously, publicly, remember that this chapter can and should not be closed.