Year End Update

Dear Stanford Community Members,

The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East has now completed its programming for the 2007/2008 academic year. I think we did some extraordinary and unique work in the history of the group. At the beginning of the year, we worked on our image and recruited great members such as George Stevens, Ronny Hamed, Ernesto Garcia, Atalya Ben-Haim, Shira Beery and Neveen Mahmoud. We took the first couple of months slowly, allowing our diverse officer core to gain experience and CJME began to work like a well-oiled machine. Our three 'cultural' events successfully introduced Stanford to a new aspect of CJME and challenged the group to cooperate and bond in ways that run-of-the-mill speaker events cannot.

However, we did not forget our commitment to intellectual discourse and, after a tough and frustrating Winter Quarter, we hosted three esteemed experts. The diversity of both the topics and the speakers' backgrounds pleased me; not only did we span the Middle East from Egypt, across Israel and Palestine, all the way to Baghdad but we learned about these regions from a policy, advocacy and journalistic perspective. Within the group we educated ourselves from the start and showed that CJME is committed to learning as well; beginning with the self-education presentations we prepared back in October and November and culminating in the outstanding feat of research and discussion that was our Nakba Day exhibit. Throughout this, members seem to have taken their work with CJME as seriously as their coursework - no offense to any of their professors!

There were disappointments: the membership numbers dipped at some crucial periods and our ambitious petition to end civilian suffering in Gaza proved one bridge too far for CJME, impeded by on-campus politics and the never-ending Democratic nomination process. Hopefully, we can return next year with a similar initiative. Throughout all of our endeavors, we have received tremendous support from friends and colleagues on campus who help in the planning of our programs, from tireless community members who regularly turn out in droves for our events and from Stanford departments that contribute generously to the group's finances. And, of course, from CJME's outstanding members, some of whom will be leaving us next year but many of whom will be returning in September, perhaps as newly-elected officers. We congratulate Vice-President Merrit Kennedy and Publicity Officer Sam Dubal on their forthcoming graduations.

If you have helped CJME in any way this year, I thank you for your support and promise that the group will continue to serve the Stanford community in 2008/2009.

Best wishes for the summer!

Tim Gregory, President of Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, 2007-2008