Through strange and unexpected events and chance meetings, former Earlham President Landrum Bolling says he secured high-level introductions with key leaders in the Middle East including President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Prime Ministers Begin, Peres, Netanyahu of Israel, King Hussein of Jordan, and Hafez al Assad of Syria.

Bolling, who served as an unofficial messenger between President Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat, will deliver the convocation “A Bold Vision for Peace in the Middle East” beginning at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, February 1, in Carpenter Hall’s Goddard Auditorium. Admission is free, and the general public is invited.

The indefatigable Bolling, who continues to be vigorously engaged in international diplomacy at age 98, is a veteran peacemaker and has been engaged in the discussions and negotiations on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for more than 40 years.

“The old ‘Peace Process’ is now recognized to be virtually dead,” he says. “Many see it as having been a charade for years and having now lost all credibility.

“Senator George Mitchell, President Obama’s special envoy, gave up on it months ago and resigned. The U.S. administration seems unwilling to simply try starting up talks again, which the Israelis are calling for. But the Palestinians and most Americans involved see the Israeli request as just another time-wasting maneuver.”

Bolling’s interest in the region and the people living there began when he was a reporter during and following World War II.

“As a postwar foreign correspondent, I became very much interested in the fate of the Jewish survivors and in the Zionist efforts to move them to the Holy Land despite the bitter hostility of the Palestinian Arabs who already lived there and who saw the proposal to create a Jewish state as a way of stealing their land from them,” he says. “Clearly, there was going to be war — and there was. That war and the succession of wars would threaten the peace of much of the rest of the world, especially in the time of Soviet-American rivalry in that and in other regions.”

During the convocation, Bolling will encourage people to study the Middle East issues.

“Learn what the conflict is about, what the options may be for dealing with it, and undertake to provoke a more comprehensive, objective understanding of the issues and steps that might be taken by the U.S. to promote a genuine and lasting peace,” he says. “Help to counter the simplistic pro-Israeli versus pro-Palestinian arguments that get us nowhere. They both are victims. They both have committed horrible crimes against each other. They both deserve an opportunity to live in peace and reconciliation.”

Bolling served as Earlham’s president from 1958-1973. During his tenure, Earlham became nationally known, gained a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and hired its first African-American faculty member. Off-campus and international programs blossomed under his leadership. After resigning from the presidency, Bolling continued his active involvement in global peace and justice issues and serves as a senior advisor to Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian agency, which in 2005 initiated the Landrum Bolling Peace Fund. In 2000, he and Sen. Mitchell won the Peacemaker/Peace Building Award from the National Peace Foundation. In 2002, Earlham named its new social sciences building, the Landrum Bolling Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and Social Sciences for him.

Five U.S. presidential administrations have consulted Bolling on issues in the Middle East and other troubled regions. Bolling helped set the stage for the Camp David peace accords during the Carter administration, and more recently, he helped the Clinton administration during the Kosovo conflict, which led one observer to credit Bolling with shortening the war by a month.

Following the Convocation Lecture a Discussion Forum will be held at 2:30 pm in Room 220, Carpenter Hall with Bolling for further discussion on his talk. Free and open to the public.

—EC—

012612dp