July/August 1994, p. 113

Bulletin Board

Fellowships

The American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan offers USIA-funded Near and Middle East Research and Training Program pre- and post-doctoral fellowships for scholars and educators with limited or no firsthand experience in the region, and for senior scholars pursuing field research or publication, as well as residence and travel fellowships. U.S. citizenship is required. Complete information is available from Dr. Robin M. Brown, ACOR, 3301 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, tel. (410) 516-3495, Fax (410) 516-3499. Deadline for the 1994-95 school year (ending 911/95) is Oct. 1.

The U.S. Institute of Peace announces the deadline for the 1995-96 Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace fellowships, awarded to practitioners and scholars working on projects concerning the sources and nature of international conflict and ways of managing conflict and sustaining peace. Projects are welcome in all fields and to citizens of any country. Application forms will be available in August from the USIP, Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace, 1550 M St. NW, Suite 700F, Washington, DC 20005, tel. (202) 429-3886, Fax (202) 429-6063. Deadline is Oct. 17.

Travel

The Textile Museum of Washington, DC is offering a travel tour to Morocco in May 1995. The two week trip, to be led by Dr. D. Fairchild Ruggles, professor of art history at Cornell University, will include visits to weaving studios, private visits and lectures, and stops at castles, museums, oases and other places of significance throughout the country. Cost is approximately $3,650 plus air fare; complete information is available from the tour operator, Cross Cultural Adventures, P.O. Box 3285, Arlington, VA 22203, (703) 204-2717.

Appointments

Career foreign service officer and current U.S. Ambassador to Israel Edward Djerejian has announced his resignation in order to assume the directorship of the new James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, TX.

Melissa Wells, a career foreign service officer who has been ambassador to several African countries and most recently was undersecretary for administration and management at the U.N., has been named special envoy to Sudan, a position for which earlier reports had mentioned former New York Congressman Stephen Solarz as a candidate.

Currently serving at the U.N., and formerly at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, career foreign service officer Dorothy Myers Sampas has been nominated ambassador to Mauritania, an Arab League member state.

Other recently announced nominations include former Mississippi Governor Ray Mabus as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and career foreign service officer and former ambassador to Algeria Mary Ann Casey as ambassador to Tunisia.

Deaths

Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, charismatic leader of the Brooklyn, NY-based Chabad-Lubavitch movement, died June 12 at the age of 92, after suffering two serious strokes in recent years. Born in Ukraine in 1902 and recognized as a child prodigy, the seventh in the line of Lubavitcher Grand Rebbes succeeded his father-in-law upon the latter's death in 1950. Schneerson, who was expected by many of his followers to manifest himself as the Messiah, sent by God to redeem the earth, had taken an active role in Israeli domestic politics, instructing his many followers in Israel to support the Likud bloc.

Slator Blackiston, a retired U.S. career foreign service officer who specialized in the Middle East and economic and environmental issues, died June 7 of cancer, at the age of 75, at his home in Bethesda, MD. A graduate of the University of Virginia and a Navy pilot in the Pacific during World War II, he joined the State Department in 1947, serving as an economics officer in U.S. embassies in the Netherlands, Germany, Haiti, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and India. He is survived by his wife, April, their son and three grandchildren.

Israeli Gen. Yochai Bin Nun, who received the Medal of Heroism for his command of Israeli naval squads in 1948, died June 6 of a heart attack at the age of 69. He was visiting New York City in his capacity as chairman of Israel's Oceanographic Research Institute which he founded in 1966, following his retirement as commander of the Israeli navy.

Retired Brig. Gen. Aharon Yariv, head of Israeli military intelligence during the SixDay War, died May 7 in Jerusalem at the age of 74. Born in Moscow in 1920, he moved with his family to Palestine when he was 15. He joined the Haganah in 1938 and fought as a captain in the British army's Jewish brigade during World War II. Prior to the establishment of Israel, he was active in organizing illegal immigration and purchasing arms for the Haganah. He served as head of military intelligence from 1964 to 1972, and then as an adviser on terrorism to Prime Minister Golda Meir, in which capacity he approved the assassination of between 10 and 15 Palestinian guerrillas in reprisal for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. After retiring from the IDF in 1975, he was a Labor member of the Knesset, and served as minister of transport and minister of information. In 1977, he founded the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, as head of which he advocated direct talks with the PLO.

Israeli Ambassador to Russia and former IDF chief of staff Haim BarLev died May 7 in an Israeli hospital of an apparent heart attack and complications from muscular dystrophy at the age of 69. Born in Vienna, he grew up in Yugoslavia and moved to Palestine as a teenager in 1939. A graduate in economics from New York's Columbia University, he was commander of Israel's armored corps in the 1948 war and was deputy chief of staff to then-Gen. Yitzhak Rabin during the 1967 Six-Day War, after which he was named army chief of staff. He was responsible for the construction of the seemingly impregnable BarLev line along the Suez Canal. After the Egyptians breached the line in 1973, he came back from retirement to command Israel's southern forces, retiring again when the war ended. He was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party, which he served as secretarygeneral in 1978 and as minister of police and of industry. He was appointed ambassador to Russia in 1992.