Dear Colleagues:

While spring break is almost over for many of us and the Jewish and Christian holidays of Passover and Easter are almost upon us and the spring semester and term is coming rapidly to a close, it is appropriate we pause for a moment of reflection. We are seeing changes in the Middle East which are monumental. These changes will affect us all in ways none of us can comprehend yet.

This past year has been one of remarkable growth for SPME. We have come close to 60,000 network members on more than 4,000 campuses around the world. We have had success after success in fighting of boycott, divestment and sanction attempts around the world. So far the events at University of Johannesburg have been our only failure and even there we are working to overturn the decision. We held a remarkable conference on the special relationship between the US and Israel and will be producing an important book on the subject as well as a two hour documentary done by JLTV. We are supporting our network members in a variety of ways from writing letters of support for the lawsuit against the University of California, Santa Cruz, producing the Nobel Laureate letter signed by 41 Nobel Laureates and the corresponding petition backing up their letter with the signature of thousands of academics and our work in supporting Jewish students through our efforts with other organizations in working with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. We also support our network members by running the upcoming Faculty Fellowship trip to Israel this coming June. (See the announcement in the Faculty Forum)

In addition, I am proud to report that thanks in a major way to your generosity we were able to reach our fundraising match goal of $400,000 in January, which enabled us to get $100,000 from one of our most generous and long term donors. I am happy to say that that same donor has recommitted to SPME one more time and that we have a new matching fund to announce. SPME can get $100,000 if we raise $200,000 in new money this time. That means if you gave us $100 last year and you give us $150 this year the $50 would count toward our match. Of course any new donations of scholars joining our network count fully toward the match.

So we need your help once again. We need your monetary support. We cannot do what we do without the money to do it. So give us what you gave us last year and add a little bit more on to that to count toward our match; and do one more thing for us. Ask your colleagues on your campus or in your field who is not part of our network to join us. Share this Faculty Forum with them and persuade them to join us. We need your support and their support so that we can begin to prepare for that new world that events in the Middle East are now creating.

These are critical times. Scholars for Peace in the Middle East has shown its merit in the past. Now we need to begin to prepare to find ways to understand what the new world will be and how to live with it. We need your support and we need it now to do that.

Thank you,

Professor Sam Edelman

Executive Director, Scholar for Peace in the Middle East