History
The organization was founded in 2002 by Dr. Edward Beck, Dr. Judith Jacobson, Columbia University and Dr. Ruth Contreras of Vienna Austria. Members of the Board of Directors have included: Matthias Küntzel, Ernest Sternberg, Laurie Zoloth, Gerald M. Steinberg, Efraim Karsh, Daniel Pipes, Richard Landes, Stanley Dubinsky, John R. Cohn, Rev. India E. Garnett, G. Don Morris, Leila Beckwith, Joel Fishman, Richard Cravatts, Philip Carl Salzman, Donna Robinson Divine, Kenneth L. Marcus, David Menashri, Tammi Rossman Benjamin and many others. The organization states that it has nearly 40,000 members from 3000 campuses worldwide. Its network includes college and university presidents and Nobel Laureates.
In 2008, SPME was in a partnership with Jewish National Fund. MediaWatch International, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, Technion, Ben Gurion University and University of Haifa initiated the Faculty Fellowship to Israel Summer Institute. The Program was offered again in 2010
In, November 2009, Dr. Edward Beck stepped down as Founding President and became President Emeritus. He was succeeded by Prof. Rabbi Peter Haas of Case Western Reserve University who stepped down in 2011 and was succeed by Stanley Dubinsky of the University of South Carolina and Judith Jacobson, Columbia University who served as President Pro-Tems until a new President was elected in January 2012. At that time, Richard Cravatts, of Simmons College in Boston, was elected as the new President. The other current officers are Judith Jacobson, Columbia University, Vice President for Internal Relations; Ruth Contreras, Vienna, Austria, Secretary; and Shlomo Dubnov, University of California San Diego, Treasurer. Asaf Amirowsky serves as Acting Executive Director
Read more about this topic: Scholars For Peace In The Middle East
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)