Sewanee: Peace in the Middle East Lecture

Israeli Ambassador Reda Mansour will be giving a lecture on "Peace and Reconciliation in the Middle East" on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at 4:30 p.m. The lecture will be held in Blackman Auditorium and, if you plan to attend, please be prepared to present some form of photo identification at the entrance security checkpoint.



Ambassador Mansour, a Druze, has devoted his public life to promoting peaceful dialogue between Arabs and Jews. He is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a doctoral candidate in Middle East history at Haifa University in Israel. Internationally recognized as a diplomat, author and peacemaker, he was appointed in August 2006, to serve as the consul general of Israel to the Southeastern United States. Before this posting, he served as the ambassador of Israel to Ecuador, deputy ambassador to the Israeli Embassy to Portugal, and deputy consul general of Israel to the U.S. Pacific Northwest, based in San Francisco.

Ambassador Mansour is the first non-Jewish poet to write in the Hebrew language. His short story, "Jumblat in the Negev," received the Haaretz Annual Short Story Award in 1997. He has published three books of Hebrew poetry and has received the Haifa University Miller Award as well as the State President Scholarship for Young Writers. A collection of his poems has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.