Combatants for Peace: The 19th Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Day Ceremony

Dear Friends,

We are excited to announce the launch of the 2024 Annual Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Day Ceremony. In the midst of the violence, the despair and the most divided society in our history, we are choosing to follow a different path.

Now in its 19th year, the ceremony is a chance to reflect, to mourn, to acknowledge the pain of the other but also to feel there is hope. Since October 7th 2023, tens of thousands of lives have been cut short, families torn apart, children traumatized - now more than ever we need to continue to show up for one another, to demand an end to the war and call for a political solution that brings freedom, justice and safety for all. In mourning together, we seek not to equate experiences, but rather transform despair into hope and build compassion around our shared humanity. We remind ourselves and the world that occupation, oppression, and conflict are not inevitable. 

The ceremony takes place on the eve of “Yom Ha’Zikaron” (Israeli Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror). It is one of the most somber days in Israel- where everything shuts down, the state TV channels only broadcast coverage of the national memorial ceremony- and everything feels very dark. But our ceremony is different. You will hear from both Israelis and Palestinians bereaved through conflict and feel the light seep in as we come together to both remember the past and look ahead to a brighter future.

The theme of the ceremony this year will focus on the stories of children. Children whose only crime was being born Palestinian or Israeli. What will be the future of the next generation?

Please, support the ceremony, so we can truly show the world that this is the will of the people, that the international community is behind us, and together, we can create a more peaceful future. Last year we had 300,000 people with us live - let’s grow our community, and declare once again - war is not an act of fate, there is another way!

In Peace & Solidarity from Israel/Palestine,

Rana Salman & Eszter Koranyi

Co-Directors, Combatants for Peace

Convisero Mentor Biz Herman starts new position at International Rescue Committee

Biz Herman recently started as a Researcher at the IRC working on their Switchboard team, which provides training and technical assistance to refugee resettlement providers in the US.

The main project she is now working on at the moment is developing and (eventually) implementing the Annual Survey of Refugee Practitioners, a new survey that will be conducted yearly to assess strengths and challenges among practitioners nationally. It's intended to be a counterpart to ORR's Annual Survey of Refugees.

2024 Senior Awardee: Margaret Grieve, A24

Margaret Grieve, A24

Hometown: Sacramento, California

Major(s): International Relations and Arabic Language and Cultural Studies

Meg, a senior majoring in International Relations and Arabic Language and Cultural Studies, is originally from Sacramento, California, but primarily grew up in Washington, D.C.

She served as President of the Middle East Research Group (MERG), which involved orchestrating panels and dialogues, leading weekly meetings, and aiding in the transition of the Initiative of Global Leadership to Tisch College. A highlight during her time with MERG was organizing a research trip to Cyprus during her sophomore year to investigate educational policies for refugees within the school system.

Throughout her four years at Tufts, Meg has served as goalkeeper for the Women’s Club Soccer team and, as captain of the student-led team, steered the group to regionals for the first time since 2017.

Last summer, she was an Oslo Scholar at the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies, focusing on advancing democracy and human rights globally. As part of the program, she attended the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway, engaging with prominent dissidents and human rights advocates.

Meg has also immersed herself in various countries across the Middle East and North Africa. After high school, she spent a gap year in Rabat, Morocco, teaching English, living with a host family, and studying Arabic. Following her sophomore year at Tufts, she received the SALAM Scholarship from the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, allowing her to participate in an intensive Arabic program in Manah, Oman. Most recently, during her junior year spring semester, she studied abroad through Middlebury College’s language program at the University of Jordan. There, she not only enjoyed taking classes but also volunteered at Squash Dreamers, an organization dedicated to teaching young refugee girls squash and English.

Meg now works with Professor Emeritus Sherman Teichman at The Trebuchet, where she focuses on expanding the networking community and helps with the planning of discussions concerning human rights issues and pertinent current events.

“Branching Out, Blossoming Together,” Hebrew College celebrates honoree Rabbi Adina Allen

Honoree Rabbi Adina Allen was ordained at Hebrew College in 2014 and went on to found Jewish Studio Project, an organization which aims to “cultivate creativity as a Jewish practice for spiritual connection and social transformation.” Adina credits her time at Hebrew College with helping her bring her creative practice “into the beit midrash” and positioning her to launch JSP soon after her ordination in 2014. We are particularly proud to honor Adina just a month before the release of her book, The Place of All Possibility, which unpacks Jewish Studio Project’s pedagogical and spiritual foundations, while “reframing all of Torah as a guidebook to creativity.” Jewish Studio Project is expanding to Boston in the second half of 2024, when a programming partnership with JSP and Hebrew College will renew Adina’s connection with our community.

Adina Allen

Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, writer, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and to the Sacred. She is cofounder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for healing, liberation and social transformation. Based on the work of her mother, renowned art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina developed the Jewish Studio Process, a methodology for unlocking creativity, which she has brought to thousands of activists, educators, artists, and clergy across the country. A national media contributor, popular speaker, and workshop leader, Adina’s writing can be found in scholarly as well as mainstream publications, and on her website at www.adina-allen.com. Her first book, The Place of All Possibility is forthcoming from Ayin Press (Spring, 2024).

Mukesh Kapila

Dr Kapila has extensive experience in disaster and crisis policy and management. Also global and public health, international development, humanitarian affairs, conflict and security issues, human rights, diplomacy, and social entrepreneurship, with substantive leadership roles in government, United Nations system and multilateral agencies, International Red Cross and Red Crescent, civil society, and academia. He is also an author and public and media speaker.

His work has taken him to some 120 countries in all continents. Originally schooled in India and England, Dr Kapila graduated in medicine from the University of Oxford and received postgraduate qualifications in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Since 2012, Dr Kapila has been the Professor (now Emeritus) of Global Health & Humanitarian Affairs at the University of Manchester, UK where he also founded and chaired the Manchester Global Foundation. Since 2020, he is also Senior Adviser to the Parliamentary Assembly for the Mediterranean, the principal forum for 29 national parliaments of the Euro-Mediterranean region deliberating on the creation of the best political, social, economic and cultural environment for fellow citizens of member states. He also serves as adviser on several international bodies including on the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Antimicrobial Resistance for the World Health Organization. After an initial clinical career (1980-1984) in hospitals and general practice in Cambridge, and then in public health (1984-1990) including initiating and leading the first National UK HIV/AIDS Programme, Dr Kapila joined what is now called the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in 1990 where he oversaw British aid health programmes in Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, followed by a spell based in Central and Southern Africa. Subsequently, he went on, at the Department for International Development (1994-2002), to found and head a large new government department for conflict and humanitarian affairs covering crisis and emergency situations due to wars and disasters worldwide. In that role, he was responsible for several global initiatives to reform and strengthen the international multilateral humanitarian and human rights systems, and represented the UK in numerous fora at the European Union, UN General Assembly, and on the boards of UN agencies.

Dr Kapila was seconded by the UK Government to the United Nations in 2002-03 initially as Special Adviser to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General in Afghanistan and then to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. He then became the United Nations’ Resident and Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Sudan (2003-04) leading what was at the time, the UN’s biggest operation in the world. in 2004, he arrived at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva as Director for Emergency Response handling major operations such as for the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

In 2006, he joined the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world’s largest emergency humanitarian and development network serving in different roles such as Special Representative of the Secretary General, Director of Policy and Planning, and finally as Undersecretary General where he oversaw several transformations and strategic interventions to scale-up programming.

Dr Kapila has also served in many policy advisory roles, conducted strategic reviews and formulated new programmes with several other international agencies such as the World Bank, UNAIDS, International Labour Organization, UN OCHA and ISDR, as well as served on the Boards of the UN Institute for Training and Research, the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, and the International Peace Academy. He was an early member of the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination System. He was closely involved in the development of the original Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and their successor, the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

He returned to the United Nations in 2015-2016 to serve as Special Adviser for the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, and then in 2018-2019 to found and direct the innovative Defeat-NCD Partnership at the UN.

Additionally, he has been active in several civil society groups including chairing the Council of Minority Rights Group International, and chairing the Board of Nonviolent Peaceforce that was nominated for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize. He has initiated new initiatives on sexual and gender based violence and, as Special Representative of the Aegis Trust, on the prevention of genocide and other crimes against humanity. These came out of his personal experiences in witnessing, at first hand, the genocidal atrocities in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Darfur.

He has also been a Senior Member of Hughes Hall College at Cambridge University, professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, visiting professor at the International Center for Humanitarian Affairs, Nairobi, and Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Dr Kapila has received several awards for his public service. In 2003 he was bestowed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In 2007 he received the Dr Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award of the Institute for Global Leadership for (as stated): “moral courage, personal integrity, and passion…dedicated to solving the most pressing problems facing the world”. In 2013, he was given the “I Witness” Award for human rights protection and, in 2014, the California State Legislature passed its Special Resolution 395 for recognising (as stated) “a lifetime of achievements and meritorious service to humanity”.

Dr Kapila has been a public motivational and keynote speaker at numerous events including at TedX, and delivered in Nairobi in 2013, the memorial lecture in honour of Nobel Prize winning environmental activist Wangari Maathai.

He has written extensively and served on editorial boards of several publications such as Global Governance and the International Journal of Humanitarian Studies. His memoir “Against a Tide of Evil” was nominated for the 2013 Best Non-Fiction Book award by the Crime Writers Association. His latest book (2019) is entitled “No Stranger to Kindness”. Some of his other writings can be accessed on his website.

Paul Root Wolpe

Paul Root Wolpe, longtime director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics, will step down May 31 in order to found a new center focused on conflict management, mediation and peacebuilding.

Envisioned in response to a rising “climate of conflict” within the U.S. and abroad, the new Emory center will bring together expertise and resources across Emory and the city of Atlanta to study effective approaches to peacebuilding and support productive dialogue about difficult subjects. Building upon Wolpe’s connections and deep experience as an ethicist and mediator, the center will reach across ideological lines and facilitate the work of Emory faculty, students and staff responding to upheavals domestically in politics, the corporate sector, organizations and communities — and the way they manifest in academia.

“As director of the Center for Ethics, Paul has profoundly impacted the way the Emory community and those beyond our campus understand and engage with ethical issues,” says Ravi V. Bellamkonda, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

“In his new role, Paul will continue to guide Emory’s response to some of the most pressing issues of the day, and position Emory as a leading resource for dialogue, civil conversation and reconciliation,” says Bellamkonda. “I am grateful for his continued service, and I look forward to watching the center grow from an idea to a reality.”

Bellamkonda announced Wolpe’s plans to step down from the director role to the Center for Ethics community last fall. In addition, he announced the appointment of John Lysaker, William R. Kenan Professor of Philosophy, as the center’s next director. Following a sabbatical this academic year, Lysaker will assume the directorship on June 1.

Wolpe, the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair of Jewish Bioethics and professor of medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, neuroscience and biological behavior and sociology, has served as the Center for Ethics director since 2008.

During his tenure, the Center for Ethics core faculty has grown from three to 10, with more than 50 additional affiliated faculty across Emory. The center has evolved into a crucial resource for the university, starting new programs such as Ethics and the Arts, which partners with art institutions to understand how art challenges perspectives, and Ethics and Servant Leadership, providing opportunities for students to engage with community organizations. Wolpe has also been instrumental in organizing highly visible events centered on ethics, including interviews with the Dalai Lama in 2013 and Ibram X. Kendi in 2020, both of which drew thousands of attendees.

The center’s renown has also grown through its Healthcare Ethics Consortium, which is nationally recognized for leadership in health care ethics education and consultative services for health systems, agencies and physicians.

“This is an extremely fertile time, and the center is doing really well. I’m very proud of what we've built,” Wolpe says. “I look forward to continuing to work with colleagues in the Center for Ethics and across Emory as we launch a new center focused on ethical, purposeful conflict mediation and coalition-building.”

Wolpe will bring the same dedication to innovation, partnership and the intellectual life of the community to his planned new center, which will advance scholarship on peacebuilding and provide students with the skills they need to have challenging conversations in their personal and professional lives.

“If we taught students better models for having tough conversations,” Wolpe says, “we would enrich our academic life as well as our interpersonal relationships. I’ve seen how difficult it is for people to really engage in conversations and truly listen to the other side instead of just waiting for the other side to finish so that they can say what they want to say.”

Fearless Dialogues, a nonprofit organization established by Candler School of Theology’s Gregory C. Ellison II, associate professor of transformative leadership and communal care, and Brokered Dialogue, a research method developed by James Lavery, professor of global health in Rollins School of Public Health, are both models of how to have tough conversations that Wolpe hopes to incorporate into the center’s offerings.

In addition to producing academic knowledge, the center will contribute to the community and Atlanta’s notable legacy of peacebuilding, which includes a number of Nobel Peace Prize winners with ties to the city: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; President Jimmy Carter, University Distinguished Professor at Emory; His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Emory Presidential Distinguished Professor; Bishop Demond Tutu, a visiting professor at Candler School of Theology who called Atlanta his “second home;” and Muhammad Yunus, who was awarded an honorary doctorate from Emory in 2012.

Atlanta is also home to many extraordinary organizations dedicated to fostering peace, including The Carter Center, Emory’s longtime partner. For more than 40 years, The Carter Center has collaborated with the university, faculty, students and alumni to advance President Carter’s goals of promoting peace, health and human rights globally. Other institutions in the city include the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development at Kennesaw State University and the Healthcare Ethics Consortium.

By uniting Emory’s new center, community partners and the city’s academic institutions, Wolpe believes Atlanta could strengthen its leadership and service in conflict resolution. He’s already begun conversations with potential civic and academic partners as well as local leaders elected to all levels of government.

Over the next three years, Wolpe will establish the center’s infrastructure. He will spend the first year on sabbatical, researching best practices through visits to leading centers devoted to conflict mediation and peacebuilding and institutions in The Hague, Johannesburg, Geneva, Oslo and elsewhere to study and identify structures and philosophies that may inform the shape of Emory’s center.

Wolpe will also work to establish funding sources that will contribute to the success of the center. Later this spring, he will gather interested faculty and staff for further discussion of the work ahead.

I had the pleasure of meeting Paul at a brunch at the home of my next door neighbor, Betsy Tarlin, who I referred to as the “godmother” of our neighborhood. She invited me to meet him to think about this new exciting venture he is embarking on. I am pleased to serve as an advisor to his Center, and in my first recommendation, I had the pleasure of introducing him to Darren Kew who is also leaving his post as Director of the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development at UMass Boston to become the new Dean of University of California at San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies.

Bryan E. Penprase

I am honored to serve Soka University in the capacity as Vice President for Sponsored Research and External Academic Relations. In this role, I will help foster new externally funded projects that will help SUA’s faculty expand their research and scholarship and also enable SUA as an institution to more fully realise many of its strategic priorities.  I will also be working to expand connections between SUA and regional and peer institutions, to enable SUA to have more academic collaborations and partnerships as it expands and becomes more recognised as a world leader in global liberal arts and as it defines and builds on its mission for fostering global citizenship.

From July 2017 to August 2020 I served as Soka University’s Dean of Faculty, where I was responsible for managing the undergraduate program with its innovative Soka University curriculum and dynamic faculty, and its energetic and diverse community of students. As Dean of Faculty I had the wonderful opportunity to work with SUA faculty to help develop a new interdisciplinary Life Sciences program, develop new programs for incentivising faculty research, to help improve teaching at SUA, help SUA connect with peer liberal arts institutions, and improve Soka’s unique Core and GE curriculum. I was especially grateful for the opportunity to develop the 2018 Globalised Liberal Arts conference, co-organized by SUA, Pomona College, Carleton College, Middlebury College, and  Yale University, work with the Science Advisory Board and SUA faculty to develop the new Life Sciences curriculum, and to work with faculty and administration to develop the new Fellowship advising program, the new CPT program, the accelerated MA degree program with CGU, the new Merit program, the Teaching Innovation Grant program, more inclusive practices in search committees, and to help guide our transition to online instruction with new training programs for faculty. I feel especially grateful to have been able to help recruit 9 excellent new tenure-track faculty to SUA in fields ranging from Studio Art, Writing, Biochemistry, Sociology, French, Mathematics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Biology and am delighted to be able help bring these amazing professors to our academic community.

I was previously was Professor of Science at Yale-NUS College, where I was one of the founding faculty and the inaugural director of the Yale-NUS Centre for Teaching and Learning. In 2012-13 I served as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow at Yale University, where I was one of the authors of the blueprint for the Yale-NUS College Curriculum, and advised Yale’s President Salovey and the Yale Provost on topics ranging from online learning, Math education at Yale, and Teaching and Learning Centers. Prior to my experiences at Yale-NUS and Yale, I was a professor for 20 years at Pomona College, most recently as the Frank P. Brackett Professor of Astronomy. At Pomona College I was Chair of Physics and Astronomy, and was founding co-Director of the Liberal Arts Consortium for Online Learning. I received both a BS in Physics and an MS in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1985, and a PhD from the University of Chicago in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1992.

I am very interested in promoting and developing new and more effective forms of undergraduate education, such as Soka’s unique academic program. In addition to developing new courses and curriculum at Yale-NUS College and Pomona College, I have helped to develop a number of international conferences on higher education.  In 2017 I organized a STEM innovation conference at Yale-NUS College in Singapore that featured Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, and two days of talks from internationally recognized science and math educators. With a group from Yale University and Yale-NUS College, we developed the Globalizing the Liberal Arts symposium and workshop at Yale University during June 6-9, 2016. I also have been on the organizing committee for a series of conferences on the Future of Liberal Arts and Sciences in India, as well as additional meetings on STEM education and Liberal Arts at Pomona College, with a 2014 meeting on the topic of Online Learning in Liberal Arts institutions in my role as the inaugural co-director of LACOL, the Liberal Arts Consortium for Online Learning.

I am eager to help students and faculty reach their full potential – especially in regards to teaching. At Yale-NUS College I was founding director of their Centre for Teaching and Learning, and managed a wide range of programming for faculty development, as well as organizing discussions and drafting policies on the evaluation of teaching, fostering innovation in teaching and peer observations of teaching. At NUS I was a member of the NUS Teaching Academy, where we engaged in discussions about advancing teaching and scholarship with NUS administration, and visiting scholars from across the world. At Yale during the ACE fellowship, I was a member of the committee that developed the First-Year Scholars at Yale program – a highly successful summer program for students that helps them develop writing and quantitative skills and integrate into the Yale campus. At Soka, I am working to foster additional discussions and conferences on teaching and learning, and to develop new ways to advance student learning. We have created new programs for enhancing faculty research and teaching, including faculty Merit Awards to recognize excellent faculty research, and Teaching Innovation Grants to allow our SUA faculty to develop exciting new types of teaching.

My work on STEM education and innovative and interdisciplinary curriculum design has resulted in a volume just released by Springer, Inc. The book is entitled STEM Education for the 21st Century, and includes an overview of diversity and inclusion in STEM education, theories of teaching and learning, a review of new types of active learning in science courses, new types of engineering education, a review of global interdisciplinary science curriculum, an overview of online education and some thoughts about the future of STEM education.

I enjoy meeting with students and faculty, and am always available to discuss ways we can move forward at Soka University for further strengthen our undergraduate program and connect with universities, colleges and foundations.

Daniel Talmor

Daniel Talmor, also known as Danny, was born in Saskatoon, Canada and at age 12 moved to Israel. Danny grew up in Jerusalem. His parent’s house was filled with visitors from all over the world and all walks of life.

After high school, Danny served in the Israeli army for three years before going to Ben Gurion University, Medical School, in Be’er Sheva. The teaching hospital in Be’er Sheva was the only hospital for the entire Negev region. As a student and later as a resident and attending physician, Danny was privileged to take care of the entire, incredibly, diverse population of the Negev Desert. He started his career as a cardiac surgeon but later transferred into anesthesiology to follow his interest in taking on the most critically ill patients.

In 1999, Danny moved to Boston and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), to pursue further training in anesthesia for cardiac surgery and critical care medicine, followed by a masters degree in Public Health, at the Harvard School of Public Health. At the end of his training, he remained at BIDMC as an attending physician.

Danny’s career progressed as he held multiple roles at BIDMC. He served as the director of Trauma Anesthesia, Chief of Critical Care Medicine, Vice Chair of the Department of Anesthesia and finally in 2014, was appointed as the Chair of the Department of Anesthesia Critical Care and Pain Medicine at BIDMC and The Edward Lowenstein Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School. To this day, Danny oversees a department of 700 members delivering service at eight hospitals.

Throughout his career, Danny has been a prolific researcher and educator, publishing over 250 papers in the field of critical care medicine. His research has focused on individualized care for the mechanically ventilated patient and improving the outcomes of patients undergoing surgery and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He has lectured extensively around the world and takes great satisfaction in helping improve critical care in low and middle income countries. Danny continues to mentor extensively and to welcome physicians from all over the world into his department.

Danny lectures and consults extensively in numerous countries across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Working with doctors around the world to improve patient care is one of the great privileges of his job.

Danny got to know Sherman as a neighbor and later as a friend, spending hours bonding in the dog park. During the COVID pandemic, Danny worked 18 hour days, helping direct the COVID response at BIDMC. When Sherman was diagnosed with COVID, Danny took the time to check in on Sherman daily and be his personal doctor.

Danny and Sherman remain great friends to this day. In 2024, Danny took up Sherman’s offer to join The Trebuchet community as a mentor.

Joshua Reed-Diawuoh launches company GRIA to support African farmers

GRIA cashews help farmers in Africa earn a living

From the Boston Globe:

The cashews from GRIA, a new Boston-based company, are distinctively buttery and plump. The nuts (cashews are technically seeds) are packaged in re-sealable pouches and offered either roasted plain or salted, or lightly seasoned with herbs and spices that don’t overshadow their pure taste. You can choose from flavors like Rosemary Salted, Hot Honey, and Cinnamon Sugar. The most robust flavor is the Spicy Garlic with cayenne. Joshua Reed-Diawuoh founded GRIA, which stands for Grown In Africa, in 2019 after graduating from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, although it was initially a business school project. “It’s personal,” he says about his purpose for starting the company. “I want to support farmers and agricultural developers in West Africa and make sure they’re compensated for their labor.” While born and raised in Boston, Reed-Diawuoh’s roots are in Ghana, where he still has relatives long involved in agriculture. In his many visits to the country and working with producers, he saw their struggles firsthand. To help farmers, he sources only fair trade cashews from the countries Benin, Togo, and Burkina Faso, purchasing only those that are de-shelled, peeled, and roasted there (cashews are customarily exported for processing, usually in Asia) ensuring that more job opportunities and revenue stay local. “This allows producers to earn a living,” he says. Reed-Diawuoh works from CommonWealth Kitchen in Dorchester, where he seasons and packages his cashews after they arrive ($9.99 for 5 ounces). He’s toying with new flavors and perhaps more snack foods down the road. griafoodco.com.

This Month at The Abraham Initiatives

Reasons for Concern and Hope in Shared Workplaces

At the end of last year, The Abraham Initiatives launched a new project to promote cohesion and positive relations in mixed workplaces. These shared workplaces are both an area of concern and opportunity. Since October 7th, we have heard disturbing reports of tensions and discrimination. At the same time, these are islands of cooperation, where Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel interact most often. 

Our Shared Workplaces Initiative is recruiting and training management consultants in offering advice geared toward ensuring fairness and equity in mixed workplaces (one such training is pictured above). A first cohort of consultants recently graduated from our training and have started advising organizations—including in the private sector, education, and municipal government. Our initiative is unique in that we emphasize the importance of intervening in blue collar workplaces, which are among the most diverse in Israeli society and have not received adequate attention. 

A survey we recently completed with the Afkar Institute demonstrates the need for intervention and the effectiveness of our model. The findings are clear: shared workplaces that invest in cooperation between Jewish and Arab employees have much better outcomes across a wide array of categories.

READ MORE

Abraham Initiatives Co-CEO Meets with Mechina Students

 Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, our Co-CEO, spoke with students from Mechina Bina (pre-military academy) about crime and violence in Arab society. Amnon provided background information including some of the deep social challenges behind the problem. Bina is one of the mechinot that participate in our Living in One Land anti-racism education initiative, and the students' interest and curiosity about their Arab neighbors have grown from meeting to meeting. We have observed these changes within their questions as well as in their attitudes and opinions. As Amnon explained, "I am meeting these young men and women of Bina for the second time this year and leave full of hope from their open minds, their curiosity and their growing values."

Training Courses for Educators in the Negev

 

This month we held the final teacher training session of the academic year in educating against violence in schools.As part of our intervention within Bedouin communities of the Negev to stop the cycle of violence and open the possibility of a better future, we continue to provide our personal security and safety courses to young adults, as well as training for educators. The final meeting was impactful, with teachers sharing how beneficial these trainings have been for them in the classroom.

Raising Awareness Abroad

Over the last month, staff experts from The Abraham Initiatives have toured the US and UK to speak about efforts to bolster shared society in Israel, and ensure equity of services and full rights for Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. In London, Labour Friends of Israel hosted incoming Co-CEO, Shahira Shalaby, and Co-Director of Public Affairs, Moran Maimoni, to provide a briefing for Members of Parliament. In the US, Shahira joined Co- Director of Programs Ruth Lewin-Chen in meetings with supporters, including at the J Street conference in Washington (pictured). Ruth and Shahira also met with community organizations in New York and Chicago that work on issues of violence prevention, police reform, and social cohesion to exchange best practices, models, and experiences.

 

Policy Updates from Israel

 

Our team in Israel regularly produces succinct and evidence-based policy papers and recommendations for government ministries, academic institutions, and a variety public and private entities facing challenges related to shared life. Below are links to recent policy publications translated into English.

Ramadan: Challenges and Policy Recommendations

Cuts to the Budget for Curbing Violence and Crime in Arab Society

Cuts in the Budget for Arab Society

Policy Paper on Supervision of Schools Bill

Peace Education and Shared Society During the War

Call for Applications: Nuclear Futures Fellowship

Call for Applications: Nuclear Futures Fellowship


As we announced in our April News earlier this week, Ploughshares and Horizon 2045 announced our exciting new partnership this week, one that will see us co-creating programs and experiences designed to instill long-term thinking, systems thinking, and cross-issue awareness and collaboration as foundational field-wide capacities. Now we are thrilled to announce the first fruits of this collaborative work - a new opportunity for both emerging and established leaders in the nuclear field: the Nuclear Futures Fellowship. 

The selected Fellows will have the opportunity to engage in a structured learning experience to develop the adaptive leadership practices, tools and relationships necessary to help the nuclear field succeed in a dramatically changing landscape. In particular, the program will focus on developing systems thinking, strategic foresight, and change leadership skills. 

At this time we are inviting applicants for the program and we encourage you to share this opportunity widely with your network. Please read the detailedFellowship guidelines here for further information on the program, application process, and selection criteria.

Cheers,
The Horizon 2045 and Ploughshares teams

Horizon2045.org

Supporting Horizon 2045

Like all nonprofits, we are actively fundraising—and we see all sorts of opportunities ahead for engaging new partners, spawning new collaborations, and bringing our fellowship model to critical questions that other organizations are asking. If you are interested in learning more about how to work with Horizon 2045 and how to support our mission, contact our executive director, Morgan Matthews at morgan@horizon2045.org.
We’d love to hear from you!

Melisa Önel featured at the Boston Turkish Festival

Saturday, April 6, 2024 | 2:00pm

SUDDENLY
Aniden

Dir. Melisa Önel

East Coast Premiere

DIRECTOR PRESENT
Q&A following film screening

Featuring Defne Kayalar, Öner Erkan, Şerif Erol, Ayşenil Şamlıoğlu, Dilan Çiçek Deniz, Aysel Yıldırım

115 min. / 2022

Remis Auditorium
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston


After decades of living in Hamburg, Reyhan returns to Istanbul with her husband for a short time. On the eve of setting back, Reyhan realizes that she has lost her sense of smell. When a doctor’s appointment leaves her anxious about the possibility of a serious illness, instead of undergoing more tests she decides to follow her own instincts to regain her sense of smell. One morning she vanishes, she secretly moves into her late grandmother’s flat, gets a random job at a hotel, meets a blind man. As she ventures away from the life prescribed to her chasing after scents, she goes back to the origins of her biggest wounds; to a fisherman’s coast where her childhood has passed and to a woman called Leman with whom guilt and desire are meshed together. Just as assuming a new life seems easy and plausible, she realizes that she has become a missing person. She considers; is this her chance for freedom?

From the Director

"Feride Çiçekoğlu and I came together for the third time in writing a script. We felt strongly about our character becoming a missing person both a form of transgression and a way to question agency and womanhood. As we worked on the script we tackled issues of what is considered to be ‘permissible’ in terms of female desire… What it means to be a woman, to be selfish, to desire and walk in the streets… A voyeur and flaneuse, does it give a chance to redefine our character; Reyhan… does it give a chance for freedom?"

John-Paul Ghobrial

John-Paul Ghobrial, from Oxford’s directory:

I studied at Tufts, Oxford and Princeton, and taught at Cambridge, before taking up my post at Oxford in 2012.  I am an historian of the Middle East, but my research sometimes drags me into other parts of the early modern world.  My first book, The Whispers of Cities (Oxford, 2013), explored the circulation of oral, scribal and printed information across Istanbul, London and Paris in the late seventeenth century.  My other major interest is the history of Eastern Christianity, by which I mean primarily the history of the Christian communities living in the Ottoman Empire.  Since 2015, I have been the Principal Investigator of an ERC-funded project called ‘Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity’ (more information can be found here: http://storiesofsurvival.history.ox.ac.uk).  My published work on this subject includes several articles on Eastern Christian migration, the history of orientalism, and the social history of Middle Eastern Christianity.  This project has also given me an opportunity to develop some of my other interests, namely in the history of mobility, the history of information and archives, and the relationship between microhistory and global history. I am the editor of a Supplement issue of Past and Present on Global History and Microhistory, which will be published in November 2019.  I teach widely across the history of the early modern world, and I welcome enquiries from prospective graduate students interested in working in fields and sources relevant to my interests, especially Middle Eastern history. 

My current research involves a number of publications related to my interests in Eastern Christianity.  First, I am completing a book called Leaving Babylon, which is a study of Elias of Babylon who I first wrote about in articles in 2012 and 2014.  My work on the Stories of Survival project has given me the chance to work with an exciting community of scholars based here at Oxford and around the world.  This will result in the publication of two books that reflect my interests in microhistory, Middle Eastern history, and global history.  The first arises from a workshop on Christians and Jews in Ottoman Society, to take place in Oxford in July 2017, which will be published as a collection of essays in 2018.  The second is a set of reflections on microhistory and global history, The Space Between, which will appear in 2019.  Finally, I have recently published articles on a range of topics related to the social history of archives, microhistory, and religious materiality.  In general, I enjoy collaborating with other scholars and especially the opportunity to learn from others working in history, oriental studies, and archaeology.  

RWCHR’s groundbreaking report exposes ongoing genocide in Darfur

RWCHR’s groundbreaking report exposes ongoing genocide in Darfur

This week, as Sudan marks one year since its brutal war began, we released the world’s first independent inquiry into breaches of the Genocide Convention in the Darfur region of Sudan.  

Not only does our report conclude that genocide is occurring in Sudan, but it exposes a network of state and non-state actors directly complicit in the genocide by funding and arming the perpetrators.

Read the full report here.

Read the Press Release here.

Stand with Darfur by sharing these findings on social media.

Support our ongoing advocacy efforts here.

Special Message from Irwin Cotler Regarding Ongoing Breaches of the Genocide Convention in the Darfur Region of Sudan

When I was a parliamentarian and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, I used every means - both inside and outside of parliament - to mobilize political will to arrest the first genocide of the 21st century, launched in Darfur in 2003.

I could never have anticipated that the calls to action that I shared twenty years ago in parliament, at Save Darfur Rallies, and in international fora would apply equally today, and would resonate so painfully and tragically.

Our Centre’s comprehensive report demonstrates in chilling detail that the same perpetrators of genocide twenty years ago - now under the flag of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) - are committing genocide against the Masalit people and non-Arab tribes in Darfur.

Our report is a wake-up call for the international community and puts the genocidaires and their sponsors on notice that they will be held accountable. It provides the substantive legal framework for justice and accountability for international institutions, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and courts to act upon.

Twenty years ago, the international community at least acknowledged the genocidal atrocities, though it utterly failed to take the necessary action to prevent them. Today, one can only feel shocked – if not betrayed – by the ongoing level of indifference and impunity in the face of another genocide that is being effectively silenced and sanitized.

The responsibility to prevent, punish, and put an end to genocide is not a policy option, but an international legal obligation of the highest order.

The prevailing culture of indifference, impunity, and complicity enabled the current escalation of mass atrocities to reach the point of genocide. But today, we can no longer look away and say we do not know.

We now know, and we must act.

Irwin Cotler

International Chair, RWCHR

Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

About the Inquiry

The report relies on open source testimonies from survivors of massacres and other acts of violence, expert reports, and other publicly available evidence to demonstrate a clear pattern of ethnically-motivated violence targeting the Masalit and other non-Arab tribes of Darfur. It describes massacres, acts of sexual violence against the non-Arabs, mass public executions, assassinations of community leaders, burning of villages, destruction of key infrastructure, and other atrocities.

This inquiry was spearheaded by the RWCHR’s Senior Legal Counsel, Yonah Diamond and Legal Advisor, Mutasim Ali. Already endorsed by dozens of world-leading experts on international law and genocide prevention, including former Chief Prosecutors of international criminal tribunals, it also includes a foreword by Irwin Cotler and a preface by Mukesh Kapila, who bore witness to the first genocide in Darfur as the UN Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan in 2003-4.

Next Steps

We have already briefed high-level US officials responsible for atrocity prevention on our findings, and plan to similarly engage with officials in Ottawa and other major capitals in the coming weeks.

Today, Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly announced that Canada has imposed sanctions against six Sudanese persons for their roles in undermining peace, security, and stability in Sudan and for their links to the main parties to the ongoing conflict. Three of these persons have direct ties to the RSF. Our team recommended four of the six for sanctions as part of our Targeted Sanctions Program.

This is an excellent step, yet far more must be done by Canada and the international community to respond to the gravity of abuses by the warring parties in Sudan.

Our advocacy continues.

Help us raise the alarm about genocide in Darfur on social media now.

Read the Press Release here.

Read the full report, Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Sudan: An Independent Analysis (April 2023 - April 2024) here.

Support our ongoing efforts to end impunity in Sudan and make Never Again more than words.

Ruhal Hardal

Dr. Rula Hardal is the Palestinian Co-Executive Director of “A Land for All – Two States, One Homeland. And a research fellow at the Kogod Center for the Study of Jewish and Contemporary Thought at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

She received her doctorate in political science from the University of Hanover in Germany, after winning a scholarship from the academic organization of the German Catholic Church. She worked as a lecturer at the same university in the Department of Political Science and International Relations and in the program for Advanced Studies in Gender for several years.

In 2015, she returned to Israel and joined Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, East Jerusalem, as an associate professor of political science until the summer of 2021. For some of her years there, she headed the Social Work Department. She was also during the last years a visiting professor of political science at The Arab American University in Ramallah, The University of Osaka in Japan and University of Lisbon in Portugal.

She is a member of two research groups on nationalism and citizenship in Israel and peace based-partnership at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. She deals in the field of political theory of identity, national minorities, colonialism and post-colonialism, social movements and feminist activism in the Middle East.

Junaid Kamal Ahmad

From the World Bank:

Junaid Ahmad is the Country Director for the World Bank in India. He joined the World Bank’s Delhi office on 1 September 2016.

Junaid, a Bangladeshi national, was formerly the Chief of Staff to World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. He joined the World Bank in 1991 as a Young Professional and worked on infrastructure development in Africa and Eastern Europe. He has since held several management positions, leading the Bank’s program in diverse regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in India and South Asia. 

Prior to joining the President’s office in January 2016, Junaid was the Senior Director for the Water Global Practice, a position he held since the creation of the Global Practices in July 2014. In this role, Junaid has built a strong and collaborative Global Practice and has brought a strong track record of management and leadership in the area of service delivery and international partnerships, combining intellectual and analytical rigor with strategic operational focus. Junaid has championed the Practice’s focus on water and the economy, and emphasized institutions and resilience in water management.

Junaid spent 10 years in the field, first as the Deputy Resident Representative and Principal Economist in Johannesburg, and then as Regional Team Leader of the Water and Sanitation Program in New Delhi. In 2004, he was a team member of the World Development Report (WDR): Making Services Work for Poor People. From 2004-2008, he was the Sector Manager for Social Development in South Asia Region and subsequently for Urban Water & Sanitation before taking on the latter responsibility for the Africa Region in 2010. He was also the Director for Sustainable Development in the Middle East and North Africa Region, a position he held from 2012-2014.

He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from Stanford University, an MPA from Harvard University, and a BA in Economics from Brown University.