Our relationship to Israel and its neighboring nations is clearly central to the War on Terrorism, and the need for fresh insight to these matters is urgent. In this issue, two ILF Fellows joined forces to lead the conference. Psychologist and broad ranging intellectual Douglass Carmichael, who has paid close attention to the ancient and modern history of Israel's development in the politics of the Middle East, served as our content leader. Donald Straus, former president of the American Arbitration Association, and an experienced mediator, facilitated the process. Recognizing the difficulty our policymakers have in discussing this emotionally loaded and politically sensitive subject, we constructed a special conference to help us to dig deeply, maintain a focus, and deal with the potentially highly polarized feelings that this subject can generate with the diverse makeup of the participants in ILF conferences.

Interview with Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby
An important contributor to progress all over the globe, especially in his home country of Colombia, ILF Fellow Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby has been a successful architect, business leader, consultant, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the distinguished MIT Media Lab, where he conducts a program using advanced technology to bring educational experiences to children who have never had an opportunity to learn at a high level. In this interview he shares with us a vision of a future that is bold, hopeful, and on the cutting edge of technology. He calls it Education for Peace: Creating conditions for peace through digital learning and broadband connectivity.

Commentary - Why Speculate? After graduating from the Harvard Medical School, teaching anthropology at Cambridge, and serving as a Fellow at the Salk Institute, Michael Crichton embarked full-time on a career as a writer and filmmaker. Called "the father of the techno-thriller," his twenty novels include The Andromeda Strain (written while he was still a medical student), Congo, Jurassic Park and Timeline. He has also written four books of non-fiction: Electronic Life, Five Patients, Travels, and Jasper Johns. Now an ILF Fellow, he is the only person to have had, at the same time, the number one book, the number one movie, and the number one TV show in the United States. This commentary was first presented as the keynote address at the ILF annual meeting. He opens with "My topic for today is the prevalence of speculation in media. What does it mean? Why has it become so ubiquitous? Should we do something about it? If so, what? And why? Should we care at all? Isn't speculation valuable? Isn't it natural?..." It might seem strange for a fiction writer to question the validity of speculation, but he makes a strong case, yet presents it in a delightful, lighthearted style.

From the Editor
In this issue, our conference deals with New Approaches to Israel and the Middle East. The subgroup of fifteen ILF Fellows that discussed this sensitive issue included Muslims and Jews, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Co-leader Douglass Carmichael (who worked with Donald Straus in the leadership of the conference throughout) opens the conference by directly questioning whether a better approach to issues and opportunities for Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East is even possible. Although the subject is particularly difficult and complex, the ILF participants manage to reach some measure of consensus.

Preview Next Issue
Our next issue, titled Biosynergy and the Future of Humankind, focuses on the human dimensions of wildlife and wilderness conservation. It will be led by Anthony Rose. Tony was a staff member at WBSI in the sixties when he was a post-doctoral fellow working with Carl Rogers, having just completed his Ph.D. in psychology at UCLA. While a student there, he taught the first lab course given in animal behavior, and that interest has stayed with him all these years. As a social psychologist, the primates he is most interested in, of course, are humans, in particular how and why we continue to endanger ourselves and the rest of life on this planet, and what we might do about it. As head of the Biosynergy Institute he has studied people and primates in Africa, Central America and Asia. His inquiries into the bushmeat crisis have focused on commercial hunting and conservation values in west and central Africa. He has written three books and scores of articles. In short, he's done his homework, and we are very fortunate to have him help us think through the human dimensions of wildlife and wilderness conservation.

Archives of Previous Issues
If you missed a past issue or simply want to review something of interest, please visit our archives where you will find links to all of our past Conference Digests, Interviews and Commentaries.