A Dear Colleague Letter from Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Psychology and Women’s Studies, City University of the City of New York, Author and Activist…

Dear Colleagues:

SPME is a unique organization whose strength lies in our identities and experiences as professors and scholars who are not “company” men and women in terms of the organized Jewish world. Our work, both individually and collectively under the inspiring leaderships of Drs. Ed Beck and Judiy Jacobson has accomplished things that no other organization has accomplished in terms of documenting the enormous biases among academics in the area of Israel-Palestine.. It would be a tragedy if SPME ceased to exist only because the organized and highly competitive ewish world has faiuled to fund us. We therefore turn to you, our grassroots members and follow scholars, acadremics, and thinkers for support to keep us from going under entirely. The culture war is the hottest war. Please help us fight back against the Big Lies.

It has been my honor and privilege to have served on the Board and hope to do so for as long as possible.

All best,

Phyllis Chesler Ph.D, Emerita, Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at CUNY and author.

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Why I Contribute to SPME

Philip Carl Salzman
Professor of Anthropology
McGill University

There are so many worthy causes-cancer research, disaster relief, poverty assistance-why do I donate our scarce funds to Scholars for Peace in the Middle East? My answer is: for a future in which there is a place for me and my children.

Growing up in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, young boys like myself from Jewish families did not realize how unprecedented was the peace, security, and acceptance that we enjoyed. It seemed natural to us, and we took it for granted. Our knowledge of the holocaust was second hand, abstract, distant. We knew little of the lives of Jews in Europe and the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and less about earlier periods. And, any way, that was all past. No better proof was the founding and acceptance and success of Israel. Jews had finally taken their rightful place among the family of nations. Anyway, we lived in an enlightened age that had permanently rejected the ugliness and cruelty of the past. Our future was secure. Or so we thought.

Imagine our surprise when peace, security, and acceptance for Jews turned out to be only a momentary hiatus in “normal” historical relations. Jews are now being reviled and attacked in Europe, while the authorities deny and turn a blind eye. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is widely published and distributed and among the most popular reading in the Middle East. Arabs and Iranians vow to finish the job Hitler started. Israel is increasingly deemed by Europeans as the greatest cause of evil in the world. It is difficult to deny that the bad old days are back.
In the West, the poison is increasingly spread, not only in the radical mosques of Middle Eastern immigrants, but in our centers of teaching and learning, our universities. Current theories, such as “postcolonialism,” prompt professors and students to reject the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, and to blame it for conflict in the Middle East. Jews are increasingly seen as having loyalty to a foreign power. Sympathy is directed toward the “oppressed” Arabs and Muslims, who come to universities in greater and greater numbers.

What are the results? We in Montreal have seen the riots at Concordia University successfully blocking senior officials from Israel from speaking. We have heard about the obstruction offered to pro-Israel speakers at York University in Toronto. We know that many North American campuses sponsor and support anti-Israel and, as is more and more clear, anti-Jewish hate-fests in the name of Palestinian rights. Professors in some universities have been arrested, and some jailed, for actively supporting terrorist activities. (At the same time, but not clearly tied to universities, plots to bomb Jewish neighborhoods in Montreal have been uncovered, and yet another Jewish school has been firebombed this week.)

If we project these developments forward, what kind of world will we be living in, in five or ten years? Will I dare, in my dotage, to walk on the street and be exposed to taunts and attacks? Will my children be safe going to university, or even be allowed to go to university?

Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that the struggle for the minds of future generations will take place in universities. Students will learn what professors teach them. Thus the professoriate is extremely important in what future generations, and particularly future leaders, will learn and believe. This is why fairness, honesty, and balance is so important in the teaching and research of professors. Yet, distortion and dishonesty is currently prevalent in universities in regard to the Middle East and its history, culture, and conflicts. Even worse, many professors have strong opinions about the Middle East and its conflicts, even though they know nothing about the history and culture of the region.

SPME is potentially an important influence in the treatment of Middle Eastern matters by professors. It strives to encourage fairness, honesty, and balance. And in so doing, attempts to counter the ugly trends so evident today. This, to my mind, is absolutely critical, in shaping a decent, civilized, peaceful future. This is why I support and donate to SPME. It can only make progress with our support. Absent SPME and our influences, we leave the field to those who have always controlled it in Europe and the Middle East, with results all too well known.

Philip Carl Salzman, Ph.D.

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Ruth Contreras, Ph.D, University of Vienna and Vienna Natural History Museum Urges All European Colleagues To Join an International SPME

Dear colleagues,

SPME has been founded four years ago 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 in the Middle East. There is no other organization that
is doing this important work in the academic field.

In four years SPME has evolved from a listserv with some few subscribers to an organization which now is heard worldwide. More than 6000 scholars supported this year with their signatures SPME?s
petition against the boycott of academic institutions in Israel. We are monitoring anti-israel bias on campus and are providing tools to find academic responses to it.

I have joined SPME as a member and am proud of being able to work from the very beginning with this organization that has been able to build up a network of scholars around the world who today receive our Faculty Forum and can use the facilities we are offering on our website.

As coordinator for SPME in Europe I am seeing that there is important work to do also here. At the moment we are establishing a chapter of SPME in Austria which will start its activities this fall with the beginning of the new Academic Year. Even though Anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism are not mainstream on Austrian Universities there are scholars who are supporting anti-Israelism, some even co-operating with the anti-Semitic anti-imperialist Camp and extreme rightwing
groups.

Please consider supporting SPME?s important work – there is no other organization who would be able to provide the services we are offering

Ruth Contreras
SPME Secretary
Member of the Board of Directors
Coordinator for SPME in Europe

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From GS Don Morris Ph.D., Professor of Kinesthesiology, California-Polytechnic Institute and Wingate Institute (IL)

Open letter to SPME colleagues to join and contribute to SPME:

I feel privileged to live in both the USA and in Israel during the year. This affords me an opportunity to work with university colleagues in both countries, to teach and share with students in the same two countries. The differences between these populations in many ways are enormous and in other ways we are very much the same. I have found that a need exists for perspective and analysis with respect to Israel and her relationships with the countries that surround her. The amount of revisionist history and disinformation along with intentional misinformation never ceases to astound me.

In the beginning, I seemed to be alone addressing the preceding on my campus. However, I discovered SPME and found a group of professional thinkers and wonderful caretakers of analytical thought. In addition they also believed in the existence of a Jewish country and were actively standing up for Israel when all around us were colleagues denigrating her.

What drew me into this organization was not only the passion for Israel but also the concise, precise and managed delivery of truth with respect to Israel-this was not only refreshing, it was a powerful vehicle that provided much needed support for my own work on my individual campus. To have a group of colleagues ready, able and willing to assist you is stimulating, invigorating and motivating enabling one to continue the good fight on behalf of Israel.

Not a day goes by that I waver in my commitment to stay the course-it may sound trite, but together we shall stand in strength. For me, this is the value of an organization called Scholars For Peace. We are in historic times and this requires strong individuals rising to the challenge. SPME provides this vehicle-I invite like-thinking individuals to “hop on” and move Israel toward peaceful coexistence with our neighbors. This task appears improbable yet it is quite possible. There is strength in numbers and I invite you to join us.

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Diethard Pallaschke, Ph.D., University of Karlsruhe (Germany) Explains to Colleagues from Europe and Around The World Why Contributing to SPME is Important