Edward Beck
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
How is your Hero working to make the world a better place?
How has your Hero impacted your life and inspired you?
Dr. Beck, a Professor of Mental Health Counseling at Walden University has, as a volunteer, created a network of international higher education academics, Noble Laureates, and college and university presidents to keep the academic debate about Israel honest, based on facts and peer reviewed research not polemics and anti-Israel propaganda across disciplines. He worked closely with renowned lawyers such as Alan Dershowitz and Anthony Julius of England to stop the most aggressive BDS movement in English universities. He created a board of renowned scholars and authors to implement the mission and vision of SPME to inform, motivate, and encourage faculty to use their academic skills and disciplines on campus, in classrooms, and in academic publications to develop effective responses to the ideological distortions, including anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist slanders, that poison debate and work against peace. SPME welcomes scholars from all disciplines, faiths groups and nationalities who share the desire for peace. He and the board have helped create chapters of SPME on the campuses of the most prestigious universities, such as Columbia University, MIT, University of Buffalo, McGill in CA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, Case Western, University of Paris, University of Vienna, University of Toronto, to name only a few. As a result of SPME's efforts, On October 7, 2002, an ad appeared in the New York Times signed by over 300 College Presidents decrying anti-Semitism on campus and calling for ethnically "intimidation free" campuses. On November 8, 2002, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger criticized a faculty-sponsored petition calling for the university to divest from Israel. "The petition alleges human rights abuses and compares Israel to South Africa at the time of apartheid, an analogy I believe is both grotesque and offensive”, Bollinger said in a statement. “As president of Columbia ... I want to state clearly that I will not lend any support to this proposal." SPME also works closely with major Jewish organization: AISH, Academic Friends of Israel-UK American Association of Academics for Israel American Jewish Committee , Anti-Defamation League, Anti-Semitism Task Force of American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Caravan For Democracy,Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism, Hasbara Fellowships, Hillel Foundation International, International Academic Friends of Israel,
Israel on Campus Coalition ,Jewish National Fund to name a few.