Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1999, page 122

Bulletin Board

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Convenings

The University of Chicago’s Department of Anthropology and Center for International Studies will present “The Uncertain State of Palestine: Futures of Research” Feb. 18-20, featuring a day of graduate student workshops, two days of panel presentations and culminating in a keynote speech by Dr. Edward Said and a roundtable discussion led by Prof. Rashid Khalidi and other historians of Palestine. Registration fee is $25 for non-University of Chicago-affiliated individuals. To inquire whether space is still available contact the Conference on Palestine Registration, Attn: L. Allen & N. Engler, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Chigaco, 1126 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637, phone (773) 288-8535, fax (773) 702-4503, e-mail laa3@midway.uchicago.edu

Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies presents lectures by Dr. Joseph Massad, Columbia University professor of modern Arab intellectual history and assistant editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, speaking on “Jordan’s Bedouins and the Military Basis of National Identity,” Feb. 10 at 5:30 p.m.; and Dr. Bernard O’Kane, professor of Islamic art and architecture at the American University in Cairo, speaking on “The Arboreal Aesthetic: Landscape and Painting From Mongol Iran to Mamluk Egypt,” Feb. 17 at 5 p.m. Both lectures are in Room 241 of the Intercultural Center (ICC). The Kareema Khoury Annual Distinguished Lecture in Arab Studies will be delivered by University of Notre Dame professor of anthropology Patrick Gaffney on the topic “Speaking of Power: The Ambiguous Authority of Islamic Clerics,” Feb. 22, 7 p.m., in the ICC Auditorium. For additional information contact CCAS at ICC 241, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057-1020, phone (202) 687-6177, fax (202) 687-7001, e-mail ccasinfo@gunet.georgetown.edu, Web site http://www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/ccas

The Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at Villanova University will present “Iraq: A Symposium on the History, People and Politics,” April 9 and 10. Panels on Iraq’s history and civilization, cultural dimensions, sanctions and their impact, unity in diversity, and regional and international politics will include national and international scholars, Voices in the Wilderness founder Kathy Kelly,Rev. G. Simon Harak, S.J., Ph.D., and Washington Report executive editor Richard H. Curtiss. Banquet speakers will be Rt. Rev. Thomas J. Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The symposium is open to the public free of charge; banquest costs are $35 single, $60 couple, $15 student, and reservations must be made by March 20. For reservations and accommodations contact the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies, Villanova, PA 19085, phone (610) 519-4610, fax (610) 519-5411; symposium inquiries should be directed to Dr. Shams Inati at (610) 519-5411, e-mail inati@ucis.vill.edu

Deaths

Three staff members of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem were tragically killed in a flash flood on Jan. 24. Elias Jeraisa, 37, Inbal Perelson, 38, and Yohanan Lowrin, 45, were hiking with three others in the Judean Desert Nahal Dragot near the Dead Sea when a flash flood swept through the wadi, killing the three. Jeraisa, a native of Beit Sahour, was a journalist and former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who had been an Israeli administrative detainee—held without charges or trial—for more than two years before being released in March 1998. A graduate of Bethlehem University, he also worked as an Arabic teacher, and is survived by his wife and two sons, one of whom was hiking with him but escaped the flood waters. Perelson, a Jerusalem resident, had recently completed her doctoral thesis on popular Israeli Jewish-Arabic music and was a regular writer for the Ha’aretz weekly literary supplement. Lowrin, an American-born lawyer and religious Jew who lived in Jerusalem, was one of the editors of News From Within, AIC’s respected English-language magazine, and of its weekly Internet publication.

In addition to its publications, AIC provides guided tours of Jerusalem and the surrounding Jewish settlements to visiting journalists, public officials and human rights workers as well as to Israeli Jews who may not have been exposed to the realities of Israeli occupation. We share their loss.

G.H. Mattison, a retired foreign service officer with extensive experience in the Arab world, died Jan. 27 in Bethesda, MD at the age of 84, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage two years ago. The son of a missionary, he was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in India, returning to the U.S. in the early 1930s to attend the College of Wooster, in Ohio, from which he graduated. He joined the foreign service in 1937, serving in Naples, Italy and in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq. He returned to Washington in 1943 and was assigned to the office of the secretary of state, then studied Arabic at Princeton University and in Cairo. He subsequently served in Beirut and Damascus, and was chief of the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern and South Asian affairs in the late 1940s.

Abdel-Latif el-Baghdadi, a leading member of Egypt’s Free Officers movement which ousted King Farouk in 1952, died Jan. 8 in Cairo of liver cancer at the age of 81. One of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s closest supporters, he served as minister of war in 1953 and 1954 and as junior vice president of the United Arab Republic, the short-lived union of Egypt and Syria. Following a term as minister of planning and finance in 1961 and 1962, he served on the executive Presidency Council until 1964.

Afif I. Tannous, a retired Foreign Agricultural Service officer, died Dec. 1 in Fairfax, VA of heart ailments at the age of 93. Born in Lebanon, he graduated from the American University of Beirut and was subsequently an instructor there. He came to the U.S. in 1937, receiving his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in social science from St. Lawrence University and Cornell University respectively. In 1943 he came to Washington, became a U.S. citizen and joined the Foreign Agricultural Service, where he was an area officer for Africa and the Middle East for 28 years. He also served as deputy director of the U.S. Technical Assistance Mission in Lebanon and coordinator of the Agriculture Department’s services to the International Cooperation Administration. He was deputy director of the 1961 U.S. Agricultural Exhibit in Cairo, and taught courses on the agricultural economy and social organization of the Middle East at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agricultural Department’s Graduate School in Washington, DC. Following his retirement he was a founding member of the Society for International Development and worked with the World Future Society.