FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Doug Stone
September 4, 2003 Barbara K. Laskin
(651) 696-6203
Israeli Peace Now Leader to Speak at Macalester
St. Paul, MN - Dr. Galia Golan, a long-time Israeli Peace Now activist, will be discussing the role of grassroots activism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a speaking appearance at Macalester College, Thursday, September 18, 2003, at 7 pm, in the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN. The event is free and open to the public.

One of the founders of Shalom Achshav, the Israeli peace movement, Golan has been a leading activist in the movement since its inception in 1978. A member of the executive of the Meretz Party in Israel, she is also a founder-leader of Bat Shalom, the Israeli component of the Jerusalem Link - an Israeli-Palestinian Women's Joint Venture for Peace, founded in 1994.

Golan is a professor in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy of the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzlia specializing in issues related to globalization, international crises and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Golan moved to the IDC following a long career at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she had been chair of the Department of Political Science, chair of the Lafer Center for Women's Studies, and Darwin Professor of Soviet and East European Studies. She has served as a consultant to the IDF on the status of women and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs.

A frequent radio and television commentator, Golan was one of the founders of the Israel Women's Network and presently is on the executive of the Israel Association for Feminist Research and Gender Studies and of the Israel Association for Women's Health. A member of the government appointed public [Zameret] committee on religious-secular relations, she is also a member of the President's Council on Religious-Secular Relations (Yahad). She is also on the board of Keshev, the Association for the Protection of Democracy in Israel. Golan was the recipient of the 1995 New Israel Fund Alice Shalvi Award for Women in Leadership and was awarded the Gleitsman Foundation Activist Prize in 1999.

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Golan is the author of eight books and innumerable articles on Soviet foreign policy and on Eastern Europe, including a recent monograph on Russia and Iran as well works on the Arab-Israeli Conflict and on women and politics. She has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy both in Washington, DC as well as the Rand Corporation, University of California, Berkeley and UCLA, Cornell, Wellesley College, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London. She is an international fellow of the Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life of Brandeis University and has been a MacArthur Foundation and a Ford Foundation Fellow.

Golan's appearance is sponsored by several Macalester College campus organizations including the Student Programming Board, Campus Programs, Project Pericles, Women's and Gender Studies Department, Political Science Department, History Department and Merriam Park Neighbors for Peace.

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,795 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, diversity, and service to society.