Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, founding director of Boston University’s program in Publishing & Digital Media and newly-named SPME board member, is working with SPME board member, Richard Landes, professor of history and director and co-founder of BU’s Center for Millennial Studies, to establish a Greater Boston chapter for SPME.

In addition to BU, Harvard, MIT, and Brandeis, which are already represented by SPME members, the “umbrella” chapter for Greater Boston will also reach out for faculty and student participation from other area schools, including Wellesley College, Northeastern University, Emerson College, Tufts University, Suffolk University, UMass Boston, Babson College, Bentley College, Simmons College, Emmanuel College, and Mass College of Art.

Given the great concentration of campuses in the Boston area, and the intellectual influence of the large numbers of faculty at the region’s schools, the new SPME chapter will be uniquely positioned to lead conversations about the Middle East and about the growing virulence of anti-Israel activism and anti-Semitism on campuses, among other relevant issues. In addition, the Boston chapter will lead an initiative to attract the active participation of junior faculty in the organization by creating a SPME Young Scholars Leadership Committee to help a new group of members take a stand for an unbiased and accurate discussion of Israel on campuses.

For over 26 years Richard, author of the forthcoming Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews, was publisher of the Boston Classical Network, a firm which created playbills to help market the region’s major performing arts organizations.

He has published over 350 articles, op-ed pieces, columns, and chapters in books on campus anti-Semitism, anti-Israelism, higher education and campus free speech, terrorism, Constitutional law, politics, and social policy. He is also a frequent guest on radio programs on the topic of anti-Israel sentiment in higher education.

The founding director of Boston University’s Program in Publishing at the Center for Professional Education, Dr. Cravatts has taught at Boston University, Babson College, Simmons College, Tufts University, UMass Boston, Suffolk University, Wentworth Institute, Emerson College, Curry College, and Emmanuel College.

In the summer of 2010, Dr. Cravatts participated, along with other scholars and academic experts from around the world, in a two-week workshop on “Contemporary Anti-Semitism in Higher Education” sponsored by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. In January, he was a presenter at SPME’s own conference “Fifty Years of the Special US-Israel Relationship (1962-2012) in Perspective.”

Boston University faculty, and members of any other Boston-area campus community, who are interested in working with SPME and planning local events and initiatives should contact Richard Cravatts at: cravatts@bu.edu