Richard L. Cravatts, Professor of Practice and Director of the Communications Management Program in the School of Management of Simmons College in Boston, has been elected President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the third in the organization's history.
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) is a grass-roots community of academics who have united to promote honest fact based, and civil discourse. The organization's mission is to inform, motivate, and encourage faculty to use their academic skills and disciplines on campus, in classrooms, and in academic publications to develop effective responses to the ideological distortions--including anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist slanders--that poison debate and work against peace.
According to the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) Web site, the organization's goal is to seek peace in, "the Middle East is consistent both with Israel's right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state within safe and secure borders, and with the rights and legitimate aspirations of her neighbors".
As the SPME President, Dr. Cravatts will be the chief officer of the Board of Directors and will oversee all the activities of the organization for its more than 50,000 members on some 3,400 campuses worldwide. SPME’s network includes college and university presidents and Nobel Laureates. It publishes the SPME Faculty Forum bi-weekly during the academic year and once a month during the summer months and breaks. In 2008, SPME initiated the Faculty Fellowship to Israel Summer Institute. The Program was offered again in 2010.
Dr. Cravatts has published over 350 articles, op-ed pieces, columns, and chapters in books on campus anti-Semitism, academic free speech, terrorism, Constitutional law, Middle East politics, real estate, and social policy, and is the author of the newly-released book, Genocidal Liberalism: The University's War Against Israel & Jews.
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East was founded in 2002 by Dr. Edward Beck, Dr. Judith Jacobson, and Dr. Ruth Contreras in order to address the increasing number of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents in classrooms and on campus.
Previously there had been an organization called American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, but after it ended its operations, it was realized that there was no grassroots network of faculty that advocated for Israel on campus. The creation of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) provided a supportive framework for academics to challenge anti-Israel attacks: an organization that would be an integral part of college campuses in contrast to other organizations that were hindered in undertaking college activities.
Edward S. Beck mentions the metamorphosis he and other progressive academics had undergone. "What is very upsetting is that the Jewish intellectual left in academia still thinks that you can get cozy with forces that demonize Israel.
"We began to understand that huge amounts of money had been poured by forces hostile to Israel, into American academia in the field of Middle Eastern studies. There were now many Arab and Palestinian professors all over college campuses who started to say that Israel had always been engaged in extremely brutal action against the Palestinians." Even some of Israel's main opponents on campus were Jews with a progressive/leftist ideology.
Edward S. Beck is a Contributing Faculty Member to the Mental Health Counseling Program of the School of Counseling and Social Services at Walden University, Director of the Susquehanna Institute. He was instrumental in defeating boycott activities against Israeli academics and academic institutions by rallying as many as 50 Nobel Laureates on various projects (as many as 40 at a time), in combating boycott campaigns.
Judith Jacobson is Associate Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. She has told reporters that members of the Columbia faculty are afraid to speak when colleagues treat students who support Israel unfairly because they do not want to risk being subjected to ostracism and even jeopardizing their careers. And that "Some faculty members are afraid to come out and express support for Israel's right to exist, and some feel they've been penalized and isolated for doing so."
Dr. Contreras is retired head of the Department of Entomology at the Vienna Museum of Natural History and is currently affiliated with the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Vienna.
SPME has formed task forces to examine issues of:
- Anti-Semitic or anti-Israel biases in the mandatory multicultural religious and ethnic teachings on campus and in the community. Peer contact is quiet, respectful, and often effective. The offending academic is approached by another resident scholar from the same area. They exchange views and can debate back and forth as to the merits of the curriculum, the chapter, the paper or wherever the offense which has been committed.
- Maintaining "intimidation free" campuses. Few university teachers are willing to expose themselves and work on pro-Israel advocacy because this has become politically incorrect. This causes problems, particularly when Jewish students are seeking vital support. "We try to hook them up, wherever possible, with sympathetic faculty members.” Academics have also been refused tenure because they expressed pro-Israeli opinions. SPME provides collegial support as well as helping obtain legal advice and offering to peer-review work and writing to promotion and tenure committees.
- Dealing with academic integrity with respect to fabricating and falsifying data when discussing the Middle East. Classroom materials and professional journals are monitored to confront anti-Israeli fabrications, such as happened with the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry and the British Medical Journal.
- Responding to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents on campus as they arise, especially in classrooms and university sponsored events. The incidents are analyzed and then faculty mobilized to address the issues.
- Working to insure the academic integrity of scholars working on issues affecting the Middle East, and to provide a countervailing voice against campus-led divestment, boycotts, and sanctions initiatives.
Further Reading:
Christian Students in CUFI fighting hatred on American University campuses
Jessica Felber: Fighter against Hatred on the Campus of the University of California at Berkeley
Israel Law Center Launches Student Hotline to Combat Anti-Israel Hostilities on American Campuses
