‘Hope, Not Hate’ topic of public talk

The Sentinel
09/08/2003

Exploring the relationship between the U.S. and the Islamic world is increasingly important today as the conflict in Iraq drags on and Americans prepare to commemorate the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Representatives from the National Organization for Women (NOW), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the local media will discuss these issues during the “Hope, Not Hate” event at Dickinson College, Carlisle.

The free public discussion will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Great Room of the Stern Center, West Louther Street between West and College streets.

The event is part of an initiative that involves 25 universities and colleges that are holding discussions on anti-Americanism and anti-Islamism.

The nationwide program has been organized, in part, by the Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), a nonpartisan group that seeks to raise awareness in the U.S. about world opinions of American foreign policy and to counteract anti-American sentiment overseas.

At Dickinson, the “Hope, Not Hate” event will begin with remarks from Terry O’Neill of NOW, Hamid Azad with CAIR and Carol Talley of The Sentinel.

Then the discussion will be opened to the audience for a question and answer session moderated by David Commins, executive director of The Clarke Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Issues at Dickinson College.

The participants

O’Neill, a feminist attorney, professor and activist, is the membership vice president for NOW and recently represented the organization at “Win Without War,” a coalition of national groups that advocated alternatives to pre-emptive war in Iraq.

She has been an educator at a number of law schools, primarily at Tulane University, where she taught feminist legal theory and international women’s rights law. She has worked with labor unions, Louisiana’s Lesbian and Gay Political Action Caucus, and the mayor of New Orleans’ Task Force on Domestic Violence.

Azad is currently associate professor of accounting and economics at York College of Pennsylvania, where he has taught for the past 15 years. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Institute of Advanced Accountants in Tehran, Iran, and both his master’s and doctoral degrees from Utah State University.

Talley recently returned to The Sentinel as executive editor, after retiring as its editor in 2002. She came to the Carlisle newspaper in 1981 and was its managing editor until she was promoted a year later to editor. She began her newspaper career at The New Jersey Herald in Newton, N.J., and worked at The (Easton) Express-Times and The (Dover, N.J.) Daily Advance before coming to The Sentinel.

Commins was recently installed as executive director of The Clarke Center and is also a professor of history. He spent part of 2001 and 2002 in Saudi Arabia and Egypt on a Fulbright Fellowship, where he did research on religious scholars of 19th century Saudi Arabia.

is event is sponsored by the Clarke Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Issues and AID.