Who is Jerome M. Segal?

 

Policy Analyst, Conflict-Resolution Practitioner, Peace Activist, Philosopher

 

I was born in the Bronx in 1943. My parents were democratic socialists. My dad, Anshel, was an immigrant, a Jewish political activist, and union organizer who in his early twenties had been an elected official in his village in Poland. In America, he made his living in the garment industry as a blue-collar worker, traveling the New York City subways to “the shop” in Brooklyn six days a week. It was quite a dislocation, as he had come from a distinguished line of Rabbis.

As a child, my parents decided that after school, five days a week, I would attend the local Workmen's Circle shule, a Jewish school focused on Yiddish and Jewish culture. Most of us kids in the shule would have rather been out playing. I've forgotten much of what I learned there, but at age 10, we did all enjoy reading Sholem Aleichem stories in the original Yiddish.

I loved my summers, especially those in which I lived with my aunts at a cooperative community about 40 miles north of New York City. My mother's older sister, Etta, was a friend of socialist leader Norman Thomas. For years he visited the community to deliver the Labor Day speech. When I made my first trip to Europe, I traveled on a Yugoslavian freighter. Etta had insisted that I carry a letter of introduction to European heads of state from Thomas. Of course, I never used it. I was nineteen.

I went to the Bronx High School of Science and then to The City College of New York, where I did a double major in economics and philosophy, graduating with honors and awards in both fields. In my senior year, I was powerfully struck by a book by John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, and it became the topic of my economics honors thesis. Galbraith argued that people who were well off reached a point at which having more money didn't really add to their happiness. He saw American consumers as on a hampster wheel, running faster and faster, but not going anywhere. Years later I would return to such issues in my own book: Graceful Simplicity: The Philosophy and Politics of the Alternative American Dream.

In those days, there was no tuition at City College, and I lived at home with my parents and three sisters. After graduating from "City," I went on to graduate school in philosophy at the University of Michigan. But that summer after graduating, in search of adventure, or perhaps something more complex, I decided to hitchhike across America. I made it as far as Omaha, Nebraska, where I purchased my first car, a 1956 Chevy.

In the fall of 1964, I arrived in Ann Arbor to begin my studies. It was terrific; philosophy was to be my life choice. But when the first of America's teach-ins on the Vietnam War occurred on the Michigan campus in the spring of 1965, my life was turned upside down. I was drawn into a life of political engagement that has taken many forms, but has endured for the last 52 years.

After much anti-war protest activity and an effort at community organizing in the African-American neighborhoods of Cairo, Illinois, I became involved in electoral politics. One of my professors, Arnold Kaufmann was working with Allard Lowenstein and other Democratic Party activists to find an anti-war candidate who would challenge President Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 Democratic Primaries. Professor Kaufmann asked me to put together a report on the voting record of a Senator from Minnesota named Gene McCarthy. After McCarthy declared his candidacy, I worked on his campaign, and will never forget that evening in Milwaukee, on the eve of the Wisconsin Primary, when President Johnson announced that he would not be running for re-election. When Bobby Kennedy enter the race, I found his the more inspiring candidacy and worked on his campaign up until his assassination that summer. In the 1968 Presidential election, faced with a choice between Vice President Hubert Humphrey (who supported the war) and Richard Nixon, I voted for Dick Gregory, the comedian and civil rights activist who ran as an Independent.

In September 1968, not yet having finished my doctorate, and not yet 25, I was hired to teach in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. I taught highly popular courses in Existentialism and Philosophy of Education but came into conflict with the University’s administration when in my Philosophy of Education course, (in the spirit of the 60's) I announced that I would not engage in "competitive grading.” Students were to either register "pass-fail" or accept a set "C" grade given for basic participation. Many students from the University's Wharton Business School who had registered for the course, dropped it. Donald Trump, who graduated from Wharton in 1968, was not one of my students. Sad. In 1972, I decided to leave my academic career in Philosophy, in search of a more politically-engaged endeavor.

In 1974-75, having completed my doctorate with a thesis on “Human Agency and Alienation,” I enrolled in a Master's degree program in Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. The University kindly awarded me a Post-graduate fellowship in Evaluation Methodology focused on assessing the efficacy of government programs. One thing led to another, and in the summer of '75, I went to Washington to join the staff of Congressman Donald M. Fraser (D. - Minnesota).

Coming from more radical political activity only a few years earlier, I was a bit amazed to find myself working for the Congress. I quickly found other young staffers having a similar experience. Together we founded, The Congressional Staff Caucus, an organization, we solemnly proclaimed, "dedicated to the re-distribution of income, wealth and power in the United States."

I worked for Congressman Fraser in Washington and then at the United Nations, where Fraser was part of the US Delegation in the fall of 1975. It was the session in which the UN General Assembly enacted the infamous "Zionist is a Form of Racism" resolution.

At the UN I worked closely with civil rights leader Clarence Mitchell who for decades had represented the NAACP in Washington. I worked on developing a major policy speech on South Africa that was to be delivered by Mitchell who, like Fraser, was also a member of the US Delegation. The speech that emerged was an unusually strong attack on apartheid by an US representative, and had to be cleared by Secretary of State Kissinger. This became the first American speech in a decade to be re-printed as a UN Document, and it was cited by then US Ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan as one of the highlights of his tenure as Ambassador. In D.C.

 I continued to work for Congressman Fraser over the next several years; my portfolio covered domestic and foreign policy issues, including those of nuclear proliferation. Most astonishingly, in those days there was a proposal (which we vigorously worked against) to privatize the U.S. government's uranium enrichment program. It was to be turned over to an international consortium headed by the Bechtel Corporation, and this, it was expected, would include the Government of Iran, still under the Shah. We helped thwart this madness.

During my last two years on the Hill, Congressman Fraser was appointed to the House Budget Committee, and I worked with him to establish a Budget Committee Task Force on the Distributive Impact of Budget and Economic Policies. I became the Administrator of the Task Force, and among the most interesting of the Congressional hearings we held was a two-day inquiry into the distribution of wealth in the United States, a topic few talked about in those days.

In this position, I authored a staff report published by the Budget Committee, entitled: "Changing the Pattern of Unemployment: The Potential of Humphrey-Hawkins." The report focused on the importance to America of altering, not just the overall level of unemployment, but also the pattern of unemployment, especially the fact that it falls most heavily upon African-Americans. I argued that unemployment is often the predictable price we pay for policies we use to control inflation, and that this burden of deliberate efforts to cool down the economy should be both softened and more equitably shared. The report built on a new legislative provision in the Humphrey-Hawkins Act (Public Law 95-523) which set as national policy the objective of reducing,

"those differences between the rates of unemployment among youth, women, minorities, handicapped persons, veterans, middle-aged and older persons, and other labor force groups and the overall rate of unemployment. . ."

I played a role in getting this provision into the law. It has never been implemented.

In January 1979, after Fraser lost his bid to gain the Democratic nomination for the US Senate from Minnesota, I took a position at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where I worked in the Central Policy Bureau as the Coordinator for the Near East. This was still during the Carter Administration, and my central role was to promote the implementation of the "New Directions" legislation in US-funded development strategies and projects in the Middle East. Fraser had been a primary author of the New Directions legislation, a remarkable new law that called for shifting the orientation of US foreign aid toward fighting poverty by directly dealing with unmet basic needs, promoting the participation of the poor in decision-making, women's rights, and protection of the environment.

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in November 1980, even before his people took over at the Agency, the bureaucracy started moving away from the New Direction approach, even though it was built into the law governing our foreign aid programs. I found myself digging in, yet at the same time wondering if I would want to remain working for the government. As a civil servant, my position was secure.

Then, early in the Reagan Presidency, in support of Reagan's decision to back the right-wing dictatorship in El Salvador, the State Department issued a document called "The White Paper on El Salvador." It claimed to show, from captured documents, that the revolt against the dictatorship was really an effort by the Soviet Union to penetrate the Western Hemisphere.  This term "White Paper" set off bells. I had heard it only once before, and that was in 1965, when the State Department tried to show that the struggle in South Vietnam was really aggression by a foreign communist country against a neighboring people. I remembered how important to the anti-war effort was a rebuttal by the independent journalist, I.F. Stone.  I thought that if he were alive, he would be taking on this new "white paper." The State Department had made translations of the captured documents available to the public. I got a copy, studied them carefully, and came to a startling conclusion: The documents themselves showed just the opposite, that the El Salvador rebels, when they went to the Soviet Union for support, got a brush off. I put this into an op-ed piece, and then following regulations, sent it to the Agency's legal department for "clearance" to publish it. I was told that "it shoots down policy" and that clearance was denied.  I turned to the ACLU, and faced with a major court battle, AID reversed course and gave me permission to publish my piece. It ran in the Washington Star. A few weeks later, I got a call from a man I thought had died years before. It was I.F. Stone himself, asking if he could cite my piece, when he spoke to The Washington Press Club and critiqued the mainstream press for its inadequate coverage of Reagan Administration policy. Tears still come to my eyes when I remember that phone call.

In 1982, when Israel, led by Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon in an effort to wipe out the PLO, I saw it as an unnecessary war that was driven by an ideological determination to forever maintain Israeli control over the West Bank. In Israel, many on the left were protesting, and with a small handful of others, including Marc Raskin (father of my present Congressman, Jamie Raskin) I helped to organize an ad hoc group called “Washington Area Jews Opposed to Israel's Invasion of Lebanon.” We regularly held Jewish demonstrations in front of the Israeli embassy. This was before the terrible atrocities at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, at which hundreds of Palestinians were executed by the Lebanese Phalange, whose actions were facilitated by Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon, and for which Sharon was forced to resign as Defense Minister. Subsequently our ad hoc group became “Washington Area Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace,” and in 1987, I represented this organization as part of the first American Jewish delegation to travel to Tunis and open dialogue with Arafat and other leaders of the PLO. In Tunis, I pressed upon Arafat the importance of ending any involvement in terrorism. When we returned we had meetings with key people in the White House and the State Department, who were not allowed direct contact with the PLO. We told them that Arafat had told us that he was looking for an Israeli partner to try to end the conflict.

In March of 1988 there were not many American Jews calling for Palestinian statehood, and almost none who had engaged with the PLO. With this background, I was invited by Senator James Abourezk to be a keynote speaker at the convention of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. I think I startled my hosts, when I delivered a hard-hitting address entitled, "The PLO Must Address the Terrorism Issue." Senator Abourezk (jokingly) later told me that he almost pulled me off the stage. A few weeks later, I arranged to have this essay published in the Arabic version of the Palestinian paper, al Fajr. It was the first time the Palestinian press had carried an in-depth analysis and criticism of Palestinian terrorism, and how it was undermining the Palestinian cause. The Voice of America broadcast a story about the essay and its publication.

Shortly thereafter, as the First Intifada was in its fifth month, I took up the broader question of whether the Palestinians had a viable strategy for achieving independence. Writing in the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, I proposed that the Palestinians adopt a strategic approach I call "unilateral peace-making," -- I proposed a series of bold steps, starting with a unilateral Declaration of Independence proclaiming the State of Palestine, followed by a law forbidding acts of terrorism, the dissolution of the PLO, the announcement of peace with Israel, and sending a Palestinian Ambassador to Israel. The article was the catalyst for much Palestinian debate in the territories. It was reprinted in The Washington Post, and entered into The Congressional Record. William Quandt, Jimmy Carter's former Senior Advisor for the Middle East on the NSC, arranged for me to present my ideas at the Brookings Institute. Two people who subsequently became major "peace process" players, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, attended my presentation.

Subsequently, I expanded this "unilateral peace making" approach into a book: Creating the Palestinian State - A Strategy for Peace, the manuscript of which I gave to Arafat in August 1988. In November of that year, the PLO did, in fact, issue a Declaration of Independence, one that unilaterally accepted the legitimacy of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution which had called for two-states, "one Arab and one Jewish."  Only recently, in John Kerry's final speech as Secretary of State, did the US Government acknowledge the significance of this 1988 Declaration. It remains one of the big missed opportunities to resolve the conflict.

In the months leading up to the Declaration, I played a back-channel role between the PLO and the State Department in an effort to get the PLO to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist. In this I worked closely with former Senator George McGovern, and coordinated with former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. In part because of this activity, I resigned from USAID, (my office was in the State Department building) and took a position at the University of Maryland's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, where I remained active for over twenty years.

In 1989, I decided to form a new Jewish organization, one that would challenge AIPAC's claim to represent the views of American Jews when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I expected to face efforts at de-legitimization, and made it a condition of going forward that I find 50 rabbis who would join me. To my surprise this was not difficult. We called it The Jewish Peace Lobby (JPL), and it came to have 5,000 members including 400 Rabbis. It was a pre-cursor to J Street, which came 18 years later, in a much more hospitable environment. JPL endures into the present, and its 25 Year Report is available at: www.Jewishpeacelobby.org. In the months prior to the 2000 Camp David Summit, JPL stunned many observers with a call for sharing Jerusalem between the two states; it was signed by 300 rabbis. In its legislative efforts JPL succeeded in getting the US to start a program of grants for people-to-people, cooperative Israeli-Palestinian projects. This program, first called "The Palestinian-Israeli Cooperation Project," (PIC), endured under various names, and exists today, providing $10 million a year for grassroots peace-building efforts.

In pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace on Capital Hill, it proved nearly impossible to find any members of Congress willing to stand up to AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affair Committee, which, to this day, is the dominant force in Washington when it comes to anything bearing on Israel. At the time, Congressman Lee Hamilton, who chaired the Subcommittee on the Middle East of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did agree to co-sponsor a Congressional Resolution I authored. It called on the PLO to end all terrorism, on the Arab States to abandon the secondary boycott of Israel, and on Israel to halt settlement expansion. Congressman Hamilton had one condition: I had to find nine other members to join him as co-sponsors. I never found them.

Gradually JPL turned away from Congress and shifted more directly towards the conflict itself, focusing on innovative policy development and direct contact with the Israeli Government, the PLO, and the Executive Branch of the US Government.

In 2000, with support from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the US Institute of Peace, I published, with Israeli and Palestinian colleagues, Negotiating Jerusalem. This book was, and remains, the most comprehensive inquiry into the values and attitudes of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples on the question of Jerusalem. The core research of the work was a major news story in The Washington Post and received coverage in The New York Times, and Israeli and Palestinian papers. Our research showed that when "Jerusalem" is disaggregated into the component parts of the city, the "Jerusalem Question" is revealed to be far more open to a negotiated solution than had been previously understood. This information underpinned the willingness of Israeli Prime Minister Barak at Camp David, in the summer of 2000, and at the subsequent negotiations in Taba, to consider a division of Jerusalem along the lines of President Bill Clinton's parameter: What is Jewish will be Israeli, what is Arab will be Palestinian. At the request of the Clinton White House, I prepared material that was included in President Clinton's briefing book for the Camp David negotiations, and which the President cited during the negotiations.

Around that time, still at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, I returned to my longstanding interest in the place of the economic realm within “the good life.” In 1999, I published Graceful Simplicity: Towards a Philosophy and Politics of Simple Living (1999). The book was an effort to move the simple-living movement from its “how-to/self-help” orientation towards a broad public-policy approach that takes as a central goal, making the US economy a “user-friendly” environment for Americans with a different American Dream, one in which they achieve vital lives with modest levels of consumption and increased leisure time. I put forward a new paradigm that challenged main-steam economics in answering the question: "What is an economy for, anyhow?" Reaching back to Aristotle, I argued that all thinking about economic policy must be grounded in a conception of the good life, and further, that the good life of “The American Dream” has always meant something more than “getting and spending.”

A second project of Graceful Simplicity was to argue for the importance of beauty in any adequate conception of the good life and the good society. I argued that we have a vital need for beauty in our lives, both as consumers and creators, and that an enriched aesthetic sense on the part of American consumers, is central to creating demand for work-products and thus, jobs, that draw upon the creative abilities of American beauty-creators. By "beauty" I mean much more than fine art. Beauty, potentially, can be everywhere. It can be in good bread, a tossed salad, or a front lawn. It can be in a shopkeeper's arrangement of fruits and vegetables, or in former President George Bush's paintings. It certainly is in our national parks, but could be in every urban environment in America.  If we will it, we can have an American Renaissance. The book itself was a selection of The Book of the Month Club, and has the odd distinction of having been translated into both Danish and Chinese.

In Graceful Simplicity, as has Bernie Sanders more recently, I called for free higher education -- just as I had received at City College, 35 years before. In those days, as a teenager coming from the Bronx, I took it that "free college" was a right. I still do. My concern, however, is not just for young people and what I see as their right to a debt-free education, but also for parents, to free them from the need to plan ten or twenty years in advance for how their children can be guaranteed a quality education that will enable them to live vibrant and economically secure lives. We are the richest society in world history. We can do this for ourselves.

Around this time, I joined with others from around the country who had written about simple living, to establish The Simplicity Forum. With film-maker John de Graaf, I co-chaired the Forum's public policy committee, and we came up with the idea of Take Back Your Time Day, a day, modeled on Earth Day, that would focus of regaining control over time in our lives. TBYT Day is celebrated on many college campuses and has been adopted by several states. John went on to start the organization, Take Back Your Time, and I served on its board of directors. We were making considerable progress, until the Great Recession. According to economists it started with the explosion of the housing bubble, and lasted 19 months, from December 2007 until June 2009. 19 months? Don't believe it. In truth it was a staggering blow to American self-confidence, one from which we have not yet recovered.

 

I live in Silver Spring, Maryland, been here for thirty years, and in the 1990’s, following the birth of my son, my family joined Fabrangen Cheder, a local cooperative Jewish group that provides Jewish education to its members’ children, often through, very necesary, self-education for the adults. That's what happened to me. For roughly ten years I served as the group’s primary Bible teacher in our Sunday morning classes. It drew me deeper and deeper into Bible-study. In 2002, the Penguin Group published a book I never imagined I'd write -- Joseph’s Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible. The book is an exploration of the Bible-as-literature, and Jack Miles, one of the giants in reading the Bible as literature, (he won the Pulitzer Prize in biography for God: A Biography), characterized it as “a work of stunning originality," saying that "nothing like it has been published in years." Miles is a brilliant scholar and writer, so this meant a lot.

In my discussion of Genesis, I offered a new analysis of the dialogue between God and Abraham when Abraham seeks to have God spare Sodom for the sake of the innocent that dwell in the evil city. Abraham, who I see as the central moral hero in the Bible story, makes this challenge to God:

 

Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? . . .Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of the earth deal justly? [Genesis 18:23-25]

 

Here Abraham asserts the centrality of the individual and the dignity of each human life, in any adequate concept of justice. It is the central pillar of morality and of any decent society. Amazingly, in the Bible, it is a human being who tells God that this is His true identity.

*****

For many years, I have been strongly committed to the central importance of overcoming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a peace rooted in justice, as emphasized in Judaism’s prophetic tradition. I believe that through a just Israeli-Palestinian peace there can be not only a dialogue of civilizations, but also the emergence of a sense of an overarching Abrahamic connectedness that encompasses Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and thus some 56% of humankind. It seems to me that much of the conflict in the world today is not between “civilizations” but between competing branches within civilizations. I believe that an Israel committed to a peace based on justice, is an Israel that will fulfill the project of Abraham, and will give meaning to suffering that has been so much a part of the Jewish historical saga. I also believe that Jews should hold Israel to a higher standard than other nations.

*****

I've always been very healthy, and then, out of the blue, in 2008, my skin started to look a bit yellow. My wife saw it first, but I didn't take it seriously until my racquetball partner said the same thing. Ten days later, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease with only a 5% survival rate. I underwent major surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. My surgeon was the world-famous John Cameron. Along with my gallbladder, part of my pancreas, and several other things, he removed 35 lymph nodes, finding that my cancer had spread to seven of them. I then underwent radiation and two different courses of chemotherapy, one of them an experimental treatment for which I moved to Seattle for seven weeks. I'm now a nine-year survivor. Knock on wood. I don't really know why my cancer hasn't returned, but all seems good. But with cancer, you never know.  In all this, I've learned a great deal about medical care, both its problems and promise. I much believe in empowered patient-hood, and in the need for health policies that go well beyond the current focus on medical insurance. We are on the edge of a future of astonishing medical advances. They will transform the human experience, at least for those that have access to the health revolution that is coming. We must plan for this, making sure that the revolution-to-come will be of benefit to all.

*****

As a conflict-resolution practitioner, now for some 30 years, I believe in meeting and dialoguing with anyone who will sit down with me. It's not that I don't make judgments, but I keep them to myself. Doctors and lawyers do the same thing. In 2006, following Hamas' victory in the Parliamentary Elections of the Palestinian Authority, and in the face of growing efforts by Fatah, the United States, and Israel, to deny Hamas the role in governing that it had won at the polls, I traveled to Gaza and met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the newly elected Prime Minister. I spoke with Haniyeh about further developing a Hamas commitment to abide by any peace treaty negotiated by PLO Chairman Abbas, provided that it was ratified by a referendum of the Palestinian people. Following that meeting, I transmitted to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Bush White House, a letter that Haniyeh drafted in the course of our meeting. In the letter to President Bush, the Hamas leader characterized himself as a "peace maker" and asked for an opportunity to be allowed to govern.

Haniyeh wrote:

We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that we are prepared to establish a Palestinian State in the 1967 territories and to offer a truce for many years.

We are not war mongers. We are peace-makers, and we call on the American government to have direct negotiations with the elected government.

Unfortunately, this plea was ignored by the Bush Administration. I don't believe that Hamas offers any viable solutions for the Palestinians, and that if allowed to govern, they would have been swept from office in 2010. Unfortunately, a commitment to Palestinian democracy was not a priority for Fatah, the Israeli government, or the Bush Administration. None were willing to live with the results of the election. We will never know what might have been, but in my view, not allowing Hamas a chance at governing in 2006 was a fateful mistake, one that severely set back the chances of ending the conflict, and led to the devastation of the three Gaza wars between Israel and Hamas. In recent weeks, (Oct. 2017) former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who played a major role in freezing Hamas out of a chance to govern, has expressed his view that doing so was a mistake.

 Over the last three decades, I've met with and conversed with many of the key players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This includes Yasser Arafat, President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and George Habash. It also includes Shimon Peres, Israeli President Ezer Weizman, former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, former head of Israel’s Security Force (Shin Bet) Ami Ayalon, and former National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, General Yaakov Amidror. I've worked collaboratively on peace initiatives with former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, and Former Chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. In 2014, General Yaakov Amidror and former Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor took part in several Track II meetings on “the 1948 issues” (i.e., Palestinian refugees, Jewish State) that I led in London. This past year, I've made it a focus to write essays published in Palestinian newspapers and directed at the Palestinian public. Over the years in addition to my books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I've written over one hundred op-eds and essays, a fair number of which appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. Almost all of these are what I call “peace prescriptions” -- innovative ideas for moving towards an end to the conflict.

In 2012, with three super-distinguished co-authors, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, former European Union High Commissioner for Foreign Policy and International Security, Javier Solana, and Nobel Prize Winner, Thomas C. Schelling, I published in The New York Times, a peace proposal called "Going Directly to Israelis and Palestinians." The core idea is to focus on the two peoples rather than the PLO and the specific government of Israel. Modeled, in part, on the process that produced the historic UN Partition Resolution of 1947, the proposal calls for the UN to establish a Commission (UNSCOP-2) that would draft a fully detailed permanent status treaty, acceptable to the two peoples, which if agreed to by the two governments, would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The UN would not seek to impose this solution. Rather, this draft treaty would be put on the table, and the Israeli government and the PLO would be asked to negotiate for six months to see if they could agree on mutually acceptable improvements. After six months, each government would be called on to either accept the modified treaty or to put it to a referendum of its people. If either side agreed, and the original draft was acceptable to both peoples, the internal pressure on the remaining side to also say "yes" would be compelling. And if neither would agree, or if a referendum failed, then a moment of truth would have been attained, and conflict management rather than peace would become the focus of policy for a decade or more.

Now that President Trump has blown up the peace process with his effort to "take Jerusalem off the table" by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Palestinians may adopt this UNSCOP-2 proposal, a step I have urged in two articles I published recently in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds.

Much of my current peace-policy work focuses on the Palestinian refugee issue, an issue that has not been prominent in the last 24 years of negotiations, but one which remains at the heart of the conflict. I have some radically new ideas on this, and have presented them to both the PLO leadership and important figures on the Israeli side, including top negotiators in the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as to the late Shimon Peres, and to senior figures in the Obama White House and the State Department.

*****

I voted for Ben Cardin in 2006 and 2012. In the 2016 Presidential Primary, I voted for Bernie Sanders.

My present challenge to Senator Cardin (and AIPAC) in the June 2018 Democratic Primary emerged out of a growing awareness that Cardin is not who I thought he was. With respect to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, with relations with Iran, and now with American civil liberties, he is part of the problem. Though rooted in Israeli-Palestinian issues, this is not a one-issue campaign. It will discuss the full range of issues facing the United States, abroad and at home, especially about the need for new ways of thinking about the economy. It will be a campaign about Peace, Justice and American Renaissance. Though very much a campaign of ideas, it is a serious and determined effort to defeat Senator Cardin, and then, in November 2018, to be elected the next US Senator from Maryland.

 

For anyone interest in further information on my ideas and activities one might consult the following publications:

- The Twenty-Five Year Report of the Jewish Peace Lobby (www.Jewishpeacelobby.org)

- The 2016 Annual Report of the Jewish Peace Lobby (www.Jewishpeacelobby.org)

- Agency and Alienation: A Theory of Human Presence

- Graceful Simplicity: The Philosophy and Politics of the Alternative American Dream

- Joseph's Bones: Understanding the Conflict Between God and Mankind in the Bible

- Negotiating Jerusalem

- Creating the Palestinian State: A Strategy for Peace

- Agency, Illusion, and Well-Being: Essays in Moral Psychology and Philosophical Economics

 

 

 

 

JEROME M. SEGAL

 

CONTENTS

 

Current Positions

Education

Awards and Grants

Prior Positions

Books

Current Work in Progress

Monographs

Essays/Articles

 

a) Religion

b) Philosophical economics/development ethics

c) Israeli-Palestinian conflict

 

Selected Television and Radio Appearances

Selected Lectures

Selected articles about Jerome Segal

Interviews With JMS from 1988

 

 

 

CURRENT POSITIONS

President: The Jewish Peace Lobby (since 1989) www.jewishpeacelobby.org

Research Scholar, Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland (active retiree status)

 

EDUCATION

1979 M.P.A.  Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota,      

1975 Ph.D.   University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Philosophy)

1966 M.A.    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Philosophy)

1964 B.A.    The City College of New York, Magna Cum Laude, Special Honors in Economics and Philosophy

 

AWARDS AND GRANTS

1964    Brittain Prize in Ethics, CCNY

1964     Economics Prize, CCNY

1967    Hopwood Award, Essay division, University of Michigan   

1973     Ford Foundation, Post Doctoral Fellowship in Evaluation Methodology, Univ. of Minnesota

1992-96   Participant in grants from PEW Foundation, Population and Consumption

1994/95   United States Institute of Peace, "Jerusalem: the Limits of Negotiability."

1994/95   The Ford Foundation, "Jerusalem: the Limits of Negotiability."

1994/95   The Tydes Foundation, "Jerusalem: the Limits of  Negotiability."

1994/95   The Bydale Foundation, "Jerusalem: the Limits of Negotiability."

1996/97   The MacArthur Foundation, Research and Writing Award for work on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

1998    Sloan Foundation, grant, "On the Feasibility of a Needs-based Measure of     Standard of Living."

2009       Funding Exchange, grant "The Peace Consultancy Project."

 

Finalist: Sophie Brody Medal of the American Library Association for the most distinguished contribution to Jewish literature, 2007, (Joseph’s Bones).

 

PRIOR  POSITIONS

9/85 - 12/10 Senior Research Scholar, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland.

9/90 - 3/91      Consultant: Agency for International  Development on AID's Democratization  Initiative

1983 - 1988      Senior Advisor for Agency Planning, Bureau for Program & Policy Coordination, Agency for International Development

1979-1982    Coordinator for the Near East, Bureau for Program & Policy Coordination, Agency for International Development

1977-1978  Administrator, Task Force on Distributive Impacts of Budget and Economic Policies, Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives

1976-1977   Legislative Assistant, Congressman Donald M. Fraser

Fall 1975     Special Assistant to Congressman Donald M. Fraser, United States Delegate to the 30th General Assembly and Seventh Special Session of the United Nations, U.S. Mission to the U.N.

Spring 1974      Associate Member of Graduate Faculty, School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota

Spring 1973      Visiting Assistant Professor, New College, Sarasota

Spring 1972      Visiting Lecturer, Princeton University

1968-1972        Instructor, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania

1966-1967        Pre-doctoral Instructor, Philosophy Department, University of Michigan

 

Books

• Agency, Illusion and Well-Being: Essays in Moral Psychology and Philosophical Economics, (Savage: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).
• Joseph’s Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible, (New York: Riverhead, 2007)
• Negotiating Jerusalem, (SUNY Press, 2000)  with Elihu Katz, Shlomit Levy, Nader Said.
• Graceful Simplicity: Towards a Philosophy and Politics of Simple Living (New York: Henry Holt, 1999).  Published in Danish (2006). Also published in Chinese (2000). Also in paper by Quality Paperback Book Club (2000).  Second Edition , published as: Graceful Simplicity: The Philosophy and Politics of the Alternative American Dream (U of CA Press, 2003).
• Agency and Alienation: A Theory of Human Presence, (Savage: Rowman and  Littlefield, 1991). Paperback, 1996.
• Creating the Palestinian State -- A Strategy for Peace, (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1989).
• Also published in Arabic, by the Palestine Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, (Jerusalem: September 1989).
• The Cottage (a novel) unpublished.

 

 

MONOGRAPHS

• “The Feasibility of a Capabilities Approach to Measuring Standard of Living,” Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, 2001.
• "What We Work For Now: Changing Household Consumption Patterns in the 20th Century," Redefining Progress, with assistance from Cynthia Pansing and Brian Parkingson, 2002

 

CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS

• Olive Branch: The Palestinian Declaration of Independence and the Strategy of Unilateral Peace-Making (forthcoming).
• Confronting 1948 -- The Key to Israeli-Palestinian Peace (in preparation)
• Peace Prescriptions: Opportunities to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from 1988 to the Present (in preparation)
• The Torah-Redactor's Tale (a novel, in preparation)
• Redefining Economic Progress (in preparation).

 

 

ESSAYS/ARTICLES (Religion)

• “God’s Project” in Philosophy and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Charles Manekin.
• Review of James Kugel, How to Read the Bible, and Karen Armstrong, The Bible: A Biography, The Washington Post, November 2007.
• “Teaching the Bible in Public Schools/Reading the Bible as Literature,” Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, Fall, 2007.
• “A Novel Approach to the Torah: Cracking the Bible’s Literary Code,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency,  (reprinted in American Jewish papers) September 2007
• “A Novel Way to Teach Torah.” Jbooks.com, August 2007
• “Yes, Teach the Bible, But How?” Baltimore Sun, July 8, 2007

 

 

ESSAYS/ARTICLES (Philosophical Economics/Development Ethics)

• “Graceful Living,” Less is More, edited by Cecile Andrews, 2009.
• “Two Ways of Thinking About Money,” Voluntary Simplicity, edited by Samuel Alexander, 2008.
• “Simplicity,” The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics, MacMillan, 2005
• “A Policy Agenda for Taking Back  Your Time,” Take Back Your Time, edited by John de Graaf, (San Francisco: Berrett Koehler, 2003).
• “Are We Simple Creatures,”  Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy, edited by Verna Gehring and William Galston, (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002).
• “Income and Development,” Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy, edited by Verna Gehring and William Galston, (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002).
• “Alternatives to the Mass Consumption Society,” Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy, edited by Verna Gehring and William Galston, (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002).
• “Consumption and the Cost of Meeting Household Needs,” Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, Winter/Spring 2002.
• “Why We Work Now” New York Times,  September 3, 2001
• “We Need Less Labor, More Days” The Washington Post, Outlook, Sept. 3, 2000
• “Achieving the Good Life,” Dollars and Sense, July/August 1999
• “Consumer Expenditures and the Growth of Need Required Income," Ethics of Consumption,  edited by David A. Crocker and Toby Linden, Rowman and Littlefield (1997). 
• “Living at a High Economic Standard: a Functionings Analysis" in Ethics of Consumption,  edited by David A. Crocker and Toby Linden, Rowman and Littlefield (1997). 
• “Alternatives to Mass Consumption" in The Consumer Society, edited by Neva Goodwin, Frank Ackerman, and David Kiron, (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997),
• “The Politics of Simplicity," TIKKUN, July/August 1996.
• “Money and Our Economic Life," TIKKUN, Nov/Dec 1995.
• "Population Programs and Alternative Conceptions of Development." Report of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Fall, 1993.
• "AID's Democratic Initiative: Concepts, Definitions and Values," Agency for International Development, March 1991
• "The Nature of the Economic Development Problem," in Needs, Rights and Capacities, edited by Ken Aman, proceedings of International Development Ethics Conference, Montclair State Univerity, 1991.
• "Alternative Conceptions of the Economic Realm," in Richard Coughlin edited, Morality, Rationality, Efficiency: Perspectives on Socio-Economics 1990, (M.E. Sharpe) 1991.
• "Basic Needs, Income and Development" Ethics and Agriculture, edited by Charles V. Blatz, (Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1991. Originally in QQ - Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, U of Maryland, Fall. Reprinted in The Center Magazine, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, May/June, 1986. 
• "What is Development"  Working Paper, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland, October 1986.
• The Strategic Plan of the Agency for International Development, A.I.D. 1985 (principal drafter).
• Review of Waterbury, John; The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat,  Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1983.
• Review of Meagher, Robert F. An International Distribution of Wealth and Power:  A study of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1983.
• Richard Newberg, Jerome Segal, et al, "Rainfed Agriculture Strategy," Country Development Strategy Statement: Morocco, Agency for International Development, 1982.
• "The Employment Problem in Egypt" Agency for International Development 1981, (internal paper).
• "Strategy Reflections on Egypt" Agency for International Development, 1980.
• "Changing the Pattern of Unemployment" Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, 1979.
• "Distributive Impacts of the Administration's Welfare Reform Proposal and Alternatives," Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, 1978.
• "Rising Energy Prices and Alternative Energy Policies:  Benefits and Burdens,"  Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, 1977.

 

 

ESSAYS/ARTICLES (Israeli-Palestinian Conflict)

• The Growing Values Gap Between Israel and the US, Baltimore Jewish Times, January 21, 2018
• UNSCOP-2: The Palestinians Have an Option Other Than the Trump Administration,  [Appeared in Arabic in Al Quds on January 10, 2018]
• No, Trump didn’t end the peace process by recognizing Jerusalem -- "Jerusalem" means something very different to Arabs and Jews, The Washington Post, December 8, 2017
• The unknown history of the UN plan to partition Palestine, +972, December 1, 2017
• The Importance of What Was Not In Hamas’s New Political Document
• Published  in Arabic, in al-Quds, June 3, 2017.
• What Should President Abbas Say When He Meets Mr. Trump?
• Part Two Published in al-Quds in Arabic, on May 3, 2017.
• What Should President Abbas Say When He Meets Mr. Trump?
• Part One, Published in Arabc, in al Quds, on May 3, 2017
• The US Should Provide the Settlers With Incentives to Return to Israel
• Published in al Quds, in Arabic, Apr 27, 2017
• The Palestinian Way, published in Arabic, in al-Quds, March, 9,2017
• The PLO Must Launch an Initiative Before the Netanyau-Trump Meeting, Published in Arabic, in al Quds, March, March 3 2017
• "Mahmoud Darwish and the Palestinian Declaration of Independence," The Washington Post, August 10, 2016
• "Waiting for the French," Le Figaro, Nov. 24, 2014.
• "Palestinian Refugees and a Jewish State," Foreign Policy/Middle East Channel, Dec. 12, 2012)
• "The Arab Peace Initiative: Under Review," Foreign Policy, December 12, 2012.
• "Going Directly to Israelis and Palestinians," by  Shlomo Ben-Ami, Thomas C. Schelling, Jerome M. Segal and Javier Solana " Global Edition of the New York Times, May 30, 2012.   [Appeared in Arabic in Al-Ayyam, April 8, 2012] "UNSCOP: A New Strategy for Achieving Independence".
• "The UN as a Venue of Opportunity," Haaretz, September 23, 2011.
• "Palestinian Strategy and the UN" Al Quds, June 15, 2011.
• "Palestinian Unilateralism: Step-2 and Israeli Strategy," Haaretz, (Hebrew edition) May 27, 2011.
• "A Different Way of Thinking about the Two-State Solution," Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, (Winter/Spring 2010).
• "Declare a Palestinian State," International Herald Tribune, February 24, 2010.
• "An Alternative Approach to  the Two-State Solution," Al Quds, February 13, 2010.
• “The Palestinian Declaration of Independence of 1988,” Haaretz, December 2009.
• “The Palestinian Right of Return and Israel’s Right to Exist as a Jewish State,” Al-Quds, July 2008,  also revised and expanded in Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, Fall, 2008.
• “Israel Needs Tough Love,” Haaretz, May 2008
• “Hard Choices on Refugees,” Al-Quds, November, 2007
• “How to Bring a Unified Palestinian State into Existence,” Al –Quds, Sept. 27, 2007
• “Palestinian Statehood Within a Year,” Haaretz, July 13, 2007
• “Moving Toward a Moment of Truth.” YNET, May 31, 2007
• “Final Status in a New Era,” Haaretz, February 16, 2007
• “The Logical Step Towards Palestinian Unity,” al-Quds, Dec. 12, 2006
• “Middle East Breakthrough,” Haaretz, 13 October 2006
• “Secretary Rice’s Message to Prime Minister Haniya,” Al Quds, Aug 2006
• “Convergence and the Lebanon model,” Haaretz, 20 June, 2006
• “Proper Role of Referendum,” Al Quds, 12 June, 2006
• “Clarifying the Recognition Issue,” Al Quds, March 18, 2006
• “Avoiding Ambiguity on the Right to Exist,” Haaretz, March 18, 2006
• “The Offer Hamas and the PLO Should Make to Israel,” Al Quds, February 25, 2006
• “Last chance to End the Conflict,” Haaretz, February 7, 2006
• “The Missed Opportunity,” Haaretz, Novemer 15, 2005
• “Reflections on Palestinian Strategy,” Al Quds, Spring 2004
• “How Terrorist Infrastructure Dismantles” several American Jewish newspapers, Spring, 2004
• "Negotiating Jerusalem," Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy, edited by Verna Gehring and William A. Galston, (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002). Originally in QQ -  Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Fall, 1997.
• “Time for a Palestinian Peace Proposal,” Al-Quds, June 19, 2002.
• “An American Imposed Peace,” Haaretz, March 14, 2002.
• “A Blueprint For a New Beginning in the Middle East,” New York Times,  February 17, 2002.
• “A New Middle East Approach” The Nation, January 28, 2002
• “A Bi-national Confederation,” Boston Review, Dec. 2001/Jan. 2002
• “The Palestinian Peace Offer,” Haaretz,  October 1, 2001
• “Correcting Right of Return Confusions,” Middle East Policy, June 2001. Reprinted in Best Jewish Writing 2002, edited by Michael Lerner, (Jossey-Bass, 2002).
• “Reflections on Palestinian Strategy,” Al-Quds (Jerusalem), April 23, 2001
• “A Choice Based Approach to the Right of Return,” Ha’aretz, February 1, 2001
• “Sovereignty Belongs to God” – Al Quds, August 2000
• “The Right of Return and Israel’s Right to Remain a Jewish State,” Al-Quds, August 2000
• “A Solution for the Temple Mount,” Haaretz, August  2000
• “Two Issues, One Objective: Nothing More Important” (Jerusalem and Palestinian Refugees), The Washington Post, Outlook, Sunday, February 6, 2000.
• "Defining Jerusalem,” Middle East Insight, Jan-Feb, 1999.
• "Israel at Fifty" Tikkun, Spring 1998.
• "O Jerusalem," The Washington Post, Outlook, Sunday October 18, 1998.
• "Jerusalem: Security and Morality Necessitate Sharing With the Palestinians," Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 1997. Reprinted in ten other Jewish papers.
• "The State of Palestine: The Question of Existence," in Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, edited by Tomas Kapitan, (M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
• "Changing U.S. Policy on Middle East," The Nation, August 1996.
• "Roundtable Discussion of an Interim Proposal: A Palestinian State with Sovereignty Over Gaza/Jericho and Administrative Authority Over the West Bank," Middle East Policy, September 1995.
• "How Netanyahu Can Make Peace: A Proposal," Ha'aretz, July 1996.
• "A Secret Concession From Jerusalem? Behind Closed Doors the `Offer' of a Palestinian State," The Washington Post, May 28, 1995. Reprinted in The International Herald Tribune, as "Quietly a Middle East Milestone is Passed."
• "An Open Memo to Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat," The Washington Jewish Week, March 1995.
• "Time Runs Short for the Peace Process," Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1994.
• With William Quandt and Khalil Jahshan, "Unsettling the West Bank," The Washington Post, May 29, 1994. Reprinted in The Jerusalem Post.
• "Perspective on Mideast Peace: A Shortcut to the Goal Is, Even Now, At Hand," Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1994.
• "Keep Israeli-PLO Peace Alive: Steps Both Sides Should Take - Now," The Nation, December 26, 1994.
• "From Ritual to Reconciliation," The Washington Post, September 19, 1993. Reprinted in The International Herald Tribune.
• "Israel Bites a Big Bullet: Palestinian State is Certain," Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1993. Reprinted in Al-Quds (Palestinian paper).
• "Try This in Gaza: A `Trial' Palestine", The Washington Post, May 23, 1993. Reprinted in Davar (Israel). Reprinted in Al-Quds. 
• "A Peace Talks Gamble: Take the Big Issue First," Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1993.
• "Give Gaza to the Palestinians Now," Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1993.
• "Strategic Choices Facing the Palestinians in the Negotiations," Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter, 1993. Reprinted as a publication of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, Jerusalem, January 1993.
• "Loans and Pawns on the West Bank," The Washington Post, September 22, 1991.
• "Bush Can Call Shamir's Bluff," Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1991.
• "The Gulf War and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," World Policy Journal, Spring 1991.
• "Postwar Israel: the Prospects for Peace," Mother Jones, May/June 1991.
• "The Patriots Do More Than Down Missiles," Newsday, January 24, 1991.
• "Response to Michael Lerner on Iraq," Tikkun, November 1990.
• "A Peaceful Gulf Solution," The Boston Globe, November 12, 1990.
• "Middle East Peace: Nine Steps the United States Should Take," The Nation, July 2, 1990.
• "Gain U.S. Leverage on the Settlements," Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1990.
• "The Closing Window of Opportunity," Affirmation 3, no. 1, (Spring 1990).
• "Morality, Israel and the American Jewish Response," Le Monde Diplomatique, April 1990.
• "Does the State of Palestine Exist?" Journal of Palestine Studies, Fall, 1989.
• "Next Steps for Peace in the Middle East," The Return, Fall, 1989.
• "Achieving a Breakthrough" Al Quds (arabic), Jerusalem, September 1989.
• "Thoughts on the Palestinian Declaration of Independence," (Jerusalem: PASSIA, 1989) in English and Arabic.
• "Shamir Election Plan: Solvable Problems?" Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1989
• "Palestinian Strategies and the Road to Peace" Lecture delivered at Chatham House, The Royal Institute for International Affairs, London, April 4, 1989. Published in Al-Quds May 15, 1989 (Arabic).
• "A Foreign Policy for the State of Palestine" Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter, 1989. Appeared in Arabic in Al Quds, Jerusalem.
• "The Meaning of the PNC in Algiers"  Tikkun, January/February 1989. Appeared in Arabic in Al Quds.
• "Peace Plans Compared" American-Arab Affairs, Fall 1988.
• "Taking Yes for an Answer--The PLO is Ready to Talk if We're Ready to Listen" The Washington Post, November, 20, 1988.
• "Try Saying `Yes' to the PLO" Los Angeles Times, October, 24, 1988.
• “Time to Declare the State of Palestine,” The Return, September, 1988.
• "A Just Declaration--Palestinian Statehood" The New York Times, August 21, 1988.
• "The PLO Isn't Intransigent--Israel and the U.S. Are" The Washington Post, July 16, 1988.
• "A Radical Plan for Middle East Peace" The Washington Post, May 22, 1988. Reprinted in The Manchester Guardian and The Jordan Times and The International Herald Tribune.
• "How to Affect U.S. Foreign Policy"  Al-Quds, (Arabic) Jerusalem, May, 7, 1988.
• "From Uprising to Independent State" Al-Quds, (Arabic) Jerusalem, April 27, 1988
• "The PLO Must Address the Terrorism Issue" address delivered to the convention of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, March 11, 1988. Reprinted in English and Arabic versions of Al-Fajr, Jerusalem, April, 1988.
• "PLO Terrorism is the PLO's Albatross" Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1988. Reprinted in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
• "A Palestinian State Serves Interests of Israel, Too" Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1988.
• "Why Israel Needs Arafat" New York Times, February 7, 1988.
• "Israel Would Be Better Off Without The West Bank and Gaza" The Washington Post, Jan. 16, 1988.
• "Will Israel's U.S. Friends Press Her For Peace?" Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1987.
• "Let's Talk With the PLO, Not Close Its Offices" Newsday, October 27, 1987.
• "Arafat Assures American Jews A Negotiated Peace is Possible" the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1987.
• "Jewish-PLO Dialogue"  The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 2, 1987. Reprinted in The Toronto Star.
• "Freedom and the PLO" Baltimore Sun, July 28, 1987. Also appeared in the Hartford Courant and the Long Beach Post Telegram.
• "Why I Met With Yasser Arafat" Washington Jewish Week, July 23, 1987.
• "PLO State and Peace" The Miami Herald, July 23, 1987.
• "Mideast Policy Snagged on Semantics" Los Angeles Times, 8/24/86. Reprinted in International Herald Tribune, 8/29/86.
• "U.S. Should Support PLO-Jordan Accord for Mideast Parley," Newsday, 3/29/85. Reprinted in the Oakland Tribune.
• "Letters to the editor: Exchange With Abba Eban On the West Bank" Tikkun, Vol. 2, No. 1.

 

 

Other writings:

• "Preventing a Holocaust in South Africa," The Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1987.
• "Scarcely a Soviet Shadow in Salvador White Paper," The Washington Star, May 18, 1981.
• "Civil Rights in South Africa" - Statement by Clarence Mitchell, Jr. Representative to the 30th General Assembly of the United Nations, speaking in plenary.  Reprinted as "A Challenge to South Africa" published by the Unit on Apartheid, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs, United Nations, 1975.
• "On Ownership," Era Magazine, 1968.
• "Conscientious Objection and Moral Agency," James Finn edited, A Conflict of Loyalties, (New York: Pegasus Books, 1968).

 

 

Selected Lectures

• “Have Judaism and Christianity Misunderstood the Bible?” Georgetown University, September 2007
• “Why Unilateral Withdrawal From Gaza is a Bad Idea,” plenary debate, Association for Israel Studies, 2004
• “Meeting Basic Needs in the United States”, University of Leeds, March 2004
• “The Geneva Accords”, SAIS,  sponsored by the Government of Switzerland, February 10, 2004
• “The Future of Jerusalem” Royal Institute for Strategic Studies/Arab League Conference, Chatham House, London, December 15, 1999
• “Towards a Politics of Simple Living,” Conference on Voluntary Simplicity, New York Open Center, New York, October 23, 1999.
• “Palestinian Statehood,” part of lecture series on the Middle East for National Security Agency personnel, Spring 1999.
• "Simple Living: From Individualism to Politics," Communitarian Summit, 1999.
• “Jerusalem Is Negotiable,” plenary of Association for Israel Studies, 1998.
• "Simple Living as a Development Ideal," American Philosophic Association, December 1998.
• "Work, Time and Consumption" presented at The Time Famine Conference, Iowa State, May 1996.
• "The Sabbath and Alternative Conceptions of Development," Meetings of the American Philosophical Association, December 1995.
• "High Income Needs," Conference of the International Development Ethics Association, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, June 1992.
• "Aristotle and Mandeville on the Economic Realm," Conference of the International Development Ethics Association, Merida, Mexico, July, 1989.
• "What is a State? - Implications for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," Association for Israel Studies, June 1989.
• "Palestinian Strategies and the Road to Peace" Lecture delivered at Chatham House, The Royal Institute for International Affairs, London, April 4, 1989.
• "The Quality of Work and the Criteria for Evaluating Economic Performance" remarks delivered at Conference on Philosophy and Work, University of Michigan, March 5, 1988.
• "What the History of the Idea of Progress Has to Tell Us About Development," delivered at the Conference on Ethics and Development, University of Costa Rica, June 15, 1987.
• "U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy:  The Moral Equivalence Debate" delivered at Colorado State University and at University of Wyoming, 1986.
• "U.S. Policy and the Meaning of Development" delivered at Colorado State University and at the University of Wyoming, 1986.
• "U.S. National Interests and World Development" delivered at University of Wyoming, 1986.
• "Values, Development and Professional Life" presentation at Colorado State University, 1986.
• "Values in the Bureaucratic Life" presented at the meetings of the Association of American Colleges, New Orleans, 1985.
• "The Significance of A.I.D.'s New Strategy" Title XII Colloquium, University of Maryland, 1985.
• "Alternative Conceptions of Development and A.I.D.'s Strategic Plan" – lectures to  the participants in the Development Studies Program, A.I.D. (spring 1985, fall 1985, winter 1986, spring 1986).
• "The Nature of Development" paper delivered at the VIII World Conference on Future Studies, Costa Rica, 1984.
• "A Model of Human Activity and Agency" talk given at Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, San Diego, 1981.
• "The Value of Home Production:  Conceptual Issues and Policy Implications" paper delivered at the meetings of the Population Association of America, 1981.

 

 

TELEVISION AND RADIO APPEARANCES (up to 2003)

T.V.

• C-SPAN, American Public Opinion and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, (PIPA survey), Panel Discussion at the National Press Club, May 2003.
• CNN – Current state of peace process, guest, Lou Dobb’s News Hour, May 22, 2002
• CNN, Analysis of current state of peace process, Oct. 8, 2000
• CNN International, Analysis of Camp David Negotiations, July 2000.
• Panelist, "Middle East Forum with David Aikman," on question of Jerusalem, November 1998.
• Studio Guest, "Insight" CNN International, October 15, 1998.
• Studio guest on "Think Tank" roundtable on Status of Peace Process. Ben Wattenberg host. Spring 1997.
• CNN - International, Commentary on Netanyahu/Bar-On Affair, April 19, 1997.
• PG Cable News, Interview on the Israeli elections, June 3, 1996.
• "Coast to Coast," cable, studio guest, Hamas terrorism. March 5, 1996.
• Channel 15, News, Interview on bombings in Israel. March 4, 1996.
• Commentary on Gaza-Jericho Accords, Evening News, Channel 4, Washington D.C., Sept. 1993.
• Commentary on Gaza-Jericho Accords, Channel 8, Washington D.C., Sept. 1993.
• Testimony before the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Senate Committee on Appropriations, C-Span, 6/10/92, 6/13/92, 6/14/92.
• Testimony before the Platform Committee of the Democratic Party, C-Span, 5/23/92, 5/24/92.
• Testimony before the Subcommittee on Foreign  Operations of the House Appropriations Committee" C-Span, May 15, 1991.
• "Jewish Responses to the Gulf Crisis" C-Span, January, 1991.
• "Jerome Segal and Meir Kahane: Discussion" C-Span, February 5, 1990
• "CBS Morning Show" Greensboro, North Carolina,  September 18, 1989.
• "Bob Clark Show" C-Span, August 3, 1989.
• "Evening Exchange," Channel 32, Washington D.C., May 10, 1989.
• Joe Hunter Show, ABC-TV, Philadelphia, April 3, 1989.
• Cable News Network (CNN) "The International Hour"  January 10, 1989
• CBS "Nightwatch" January 5, 1989
• CBS "Nightwatch" December 15, 1988
• CBS Network News - Bob Simon report from Jerusalem, Aug. 1988.
• Ted Koppel "Town Meeting in Jerusalem" April, 1988.
• British, French and Italian TV, August 1988.
• Israeli television (interview program and news  program), August 1988.

 

Radio Appearance/Interviews (up to 2001)

• KIDF, (Hoopa CA), guest, Balancing Work, Home and Family, December 13, 2001
• WTMJ (Milwaukee), guest, Balancing Work, Home and Family, November 15, 2001
• WBAI, (New York), guest, Bush Administration and the Peace Process,  January 26, 2001.
• Minnesota Public Radio, “Mid-morning Show,” President Clinton’s Plan, January 4, 2001.
• WJHU, Mark Steiner Show, November 1, 2000, Situation in Middle East
• Wisconsin Public Radio, Oct. 26, 2000, Situation in Middle East
• Morning Edition (NPR), interview with Bob Edwards, on prospects for negotiating Jerusalem,  October 19, 2000
• Morning Edition (NPR), interview with Bob Edwards, on sharing Jerusalem, July 26, 2000
• Studio Guest,  “Graceful Simplicity,” KGMU, Boulder CO, March 17, 2000
• Voice of America, Prospects for resolving Jerusalem issue, October 5, 1999
• Wisconsin Public Radio — 7/17/99 "Graceful Simplicity'
• Tom Pope Show — 6/30/99 on "Graceful Simplicity"
• WNYC — 6/11/99 — on "Graceful Simplicity"
• New Hampshire Public Radio — 6/8/99 "Graceful Simplicity'
• Minnesota Public Radio, talk show guest, on "Graceful Simplicity," March 1999.
• National Public Radio, studio interview on Jerusalem issue, November 1988.
• WBAI, (New York) guest, "Dissent and Diversity Within the Jewish Community". October, 1997.
• WNYC, Brian Lehrer Show, Interview on "The Politics of Simplicity," August 1996.
• NBC Radio, Interview on the Israeli Elections, June 1, 1996.
• Pacifica Radio, Interview on the Israeli Elections, May 31, 1996
• NBC Radio, Interview on bombings in Israel, March 4, 1996.
• Guest, People Are Talking, KCRG, Iowa, "Graceful Simplicity," March 1, 1996.
• Voice of America, Interview on forthcoming book "Graceful Simplicity," February 12, 1996. 
• Guest, KPFT Talk Show, Dallas, "Money and Our Economic Life," November 30, 1995.
• Guest, Jim Bohannon Talk Show, Death of P.M. Rabin, Nov. 6, 1995.
• Mutual Radio, Interview On Death of P.M. Rabin, Nov. 6, 1995
• WBAI (New York), Discussant, June 7, 1995
• BBC News Service, Panel Discussant, June 1, 1995.
• Pacifica Radio, Commentary on current developments in the Peace Process, 3/13/94
• Studio Guest, WPFW program on Hebron massacre, March 1994.
• Pacifica Radio, Commentary on current developments in the Peace Process, 1/24/94
• Pacifica Radio, Commentary on current developments in the Peace Process, 12/20/93
• Pacifica Radio, Commentary on current developments in the Peace Process, 12/5/93
• Dorothy Healy Show, Guest, Middle East issues, December 1993, WPFW
• Pacifica Radio, Commentary on current developments in the Peace Process, 11/30/93
• Interview on Gaza-Jericho Agreement, Pat Buchanon program, Sept. 1993.
• Commentary on Situation in Southern Lebanon, NBC Radio, July 1993.
• Pacifica Radio, Commentary on Jewish Organizations and the Middle East, November 27, 1992
• Singapore Radio, numerous commentaries on Middle East throughout 1992
• Pacific Radio, "Developments in Middle East," 8/24/92
• WBZ, Boston, "Prospects for Negotiations," Tom Cuddy,  August 4, 1991.
• NBC Radio, Commentary on the Middle East, August 1, 1991.
• Singapore Radio, Commentary on Middle East,   August 1, 1991.
• Monitor Radio, Commentary on Middle East, August 2,  1991.
• Singapore Radio, Commentary on Middle East, July 15, 1991.
• Monitor Radio, Commentary on Middle East, July 12, 1991.
• WORT, Madison, Wisconsin, "Israeli-Palestinian  Peace," April, 1991
• BBC World Service, "The News Hour," Commentary on  Secretary Baker's Diplomatic Efforts, April 20, 1991.
• KPFA, San Francisco, Commentary on Israeli Settlements, April 15, 1991.
• Singapore Radio, April 14, 1991, Commentary
• Singapore Radio, April 12, 1991, Commentary
• NPR Satellite "Alternative Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" produced by Institute for Policy Studies, March, 1991.
• Michael Jackson Show, "Israeli Palestinian Peace"  WBC, Los Angeles, March 4, 1991.
• Pacifica Morning Show, "Prospects for Peace After the Gulf War" February 25, 1991.
• NPR Satellite "Alternative Perspectives on Gulf War"  produced by Institute for Policy Studies, February18, 1991.
• Singapore Radio, "Israel's New Cabinet Minister," February 4, 1991.
• First Day Show with Tom Cuddy, "Peace Prospects," WBZ Radio, Boston, January 27, 1991.
• Pacifica Radio, "Shamir's Visit and an International Conference on the Middle East," December 1990.
• Ted Heisal Show, "Gulf Crisis and Israeli-       Palestinian Conflict" Ann Arbor, November 1990.
• Singapore Radio, "Israel and the Gulf Crisis"   September 20, 1990.
• KPFA, San Francisco, summer 1990.
• KPFA, San Francisco, guest, November 15, 1989.
• Pacifica Radio, Judy Gabriel Show, Los Angeles,   November, 13, 1989.
• "Ray Briehm Show" ABC-AM, Pasadena, guest, November  9, 1989.
• WPER, "John Levitt Show," Palm Beach, interview,  July 31, 1989.
• KRSO, San Bernadino, interview with Ed Scannelli,  July 28, 1989.
• KMJ, Fresno, interview, July 27, 1989.
• KPFA, "Dorothy Healy Show," Washington, D.C., guest, July 27, 1989.
• WOR, New York, debate, July 26, 1989.
• KPFA, San Francisco, interview, July 25, 1989.
• WBAI, New York, interview (Sheila Ryan), July 25, 1989.
• Singapore Radio, Commentary on current situation in Middle East, June 16, 1989.
• BBC-World Service, "24 Hours," May 1989, Commentary on Secretary Baker's speech to AIPAC.
• BBC-World Service, "24 Hours" Commentary, April 22, 1989.
• BBC-World Service, "News Hour," April 5, 1989.
• WPFW  Don Foster talk show, (Washington), January  31, 1989.
• KABC-AM, The Ray Briehm Show, (Los Angeles), December 21, 1988.
• WABC-AM, The Bob Grant Show, (New York) December 21, 1988.
• CKD, (Toronto) December 16, 1988.
• WPTF, The Lowell Shumaker Show, (Raleigh), December 15, 1988.
• WAMU, The Mike Cuthbert Show, (Washington), December 13, 1988.
• WDCU (Washington) - talk show, 1986.
• WDCU (Washington) - talk show with representative from State Department, Spring, 1988.
• WAMU, Diane Rehm Talk Show (Washington) 1988.
• WAMU, Fred Fisk Talk Show (Washington) 1987.
• WAMU, Mike Cuthbert Talk Show (Washington) 1988.
• Pacifica Radio Network - Interview - 1987.
• Pacifica Radio Network - Interview - 1988.
• WPFW (replay of talk given at Institute for Policy Studies) 1988.
• WERE talk show, Cleveland, (Slutsky) 1988.
• WAAM (Ann Arbor) Ted Heisal Show, March 1988.
• Israeli Armed Forces Radio, August 1988.
• California Radio interview, August 1988.
• Canadian Radio Interview, 1987.
• CKO National News (Canada) Joe Soloway, August 1988.
• ABC radio News interview, August 1988.
• BBC radio interview, August 1988.
• Voice of America interview, May 1988.
• Voice of America interview, August 1988.
• "All Things Considered" (Robert Siegel), August 1988.

 

 

ARTICLES ABOUT DR. SEGAL (partial listing)

U.S. Press (Mainstream)

• “A Jealous God, One in Need of Coaching, David Reilly, Philadelphia Inquirer, August 14, 2007. 
• “A Middle East Optimist,” Michael Hill, Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune, Jan. 1, 2006
• “In Search of Simplicity,” Brigid Schulte, The Washington Post, September 16, 2004.  
• “Israel Jews Seen Flexible on Jerusalem Boundaries,” Bart Gellman, The Washington Post, Jan. 7, 1997. (news story on Segal’s research).
• "National Glumness" editorial in The Union Leader, Manchester, N.H., November 29, 1995.
• "Choosing the City or the Suburb," Nancy Comisky, The Indianapolis Star, November 27, 1995
• " New Theory to Explain the National Glumness," Michael Feinsilber, Associated Press story, November 26, 1995. Reprinted in USA Today, and numerous other papers.
• "The Morning After," Anton Shammas, New York Review of Books, Sept. 29, 1988.
• "The Morning After: An Exchange," Segal & Shammas, New York Review of Books, November 24, 1988.
• "Palestinians Press for Declaration of Independence," Joel Brinkley, The New York Times, August 15, 1988.
• "Jewish Father for Palestinian State," profile piece by Robert Pear, The New York Times, August 24, 1988.
• "Middle East Ricochet" lead editorial, The Washington Post, August 9, 1988.
• "Palestinian State Urged by Jewish Philosopher" profile piece in The Washington Times, by James Dorsey, October 26, 1988.

 

U.S. Press (Jewish)

• "Can Jerry Segal Bring Peace to the Middle East?" profile piece by James Besser, Baltimore Jewish Times, August 5, 1988.
• "Jewish Analyst Says PLO Ready to Accept Partition Plan," The Northern California Jewish Bulletin, October 28, 1989.
• "Palestinian Independence Outlined by a U.S. Jew Active in Drafting It," Wolf Blitzer, The Sentinel, Chicago, October 27, 1988.
• "PLO Ready to Talk Peace With Israel," Segal Says" Baltimore Jewish Times, October 7, 1988.
• "Author of Palestinian Declaration of Independence is an American Jew," Wolf Blitzer, The Sentinel, Chicago, August 25, 1988.
• "Delegation of U.S. Jews Who Met With Arafat in Tunis Issue Boldly Optimistic Statement on Negotiated Peace," Sentinel, Chicago, July 25, 1987.
• "Jews Meet Arafat," Wolf Blitzer, The Buffalo Jewish Review, July 3, 1987.
• "Delegation of American Jews Meets Arafat in Tunis," Washington Jewish Week, June 18, 1987.
• "Jerome Segal: Father of a Palestinian State?"  Wolf Blitzer, The Jewish Journal, August 14, 1988.

 

Foreign Press

• "Part two of Gaza/Jericho First: A ministate" Steve Rodan, Jerusalem Post, June 23, 1995.
• "Jewish Activist Presents to Peres and Arafat a Plan to Establish a Palestinian State in Gaza and Jericho," Ha'aretz, April 6, 1995.
• " (Proposal to promote settlers to return to Israel)" Ha'aretz, May, 1994.
• "Some Light at the End of the Israeli Tunnel,"  Richard Gwyn, The Toronto Star, August 12, 1988.
• "The Man Behind the Palestinian Declaration" Menachem Shalev, Jerusalem Post, August 1988.
• "L'Affair du Document Husseini" Le Monde, August 9, 1988.
• "A New Direction for the Uprising" Joel Greenberg, The Jerusalem Post, August 12, 1988.
• "General Strike Brings West Bank and Gaza to Standstill" Benny Morris, The Guardian, London, August 23, 1988.
• "Prof. Jerome Segal, author of Husseini Document at Hebrew University," The Jerusalem Post, August 24, 1988.
• Haaretz, Israel, August 24, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Yediot Aharonot, Israel, August 23, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Yediot Aharonot, cover story of weekend magazine, profile,  August 26, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Yediot Aharonot, Israel, August 24, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Haaretz, Israel, August 12, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Haaretz, Israel, August 22, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Al Hamishmar, August 26, 1988, profile, (Hebrew).
• Maariv, Israel, August 4, 1988 (Hebrew).
• Al-Hamishmar, Israel, August 24, 1988 (Hebrew).

 

 

INTERVIEWS IN PRINT (from 1988, partial)

• Newsweek, International Edition, "A New Palestinian Strategy," September 12, 1988.
• L'Unita, Rome, December 1988.
• La Cite, Brussels,September 22, 1988.
• Trouw, Netherlands, May 17, 1988.
• Middle East Mirror, London, August 1988.
• Hadashot, Israel, August 26, 1988.

 

 

 

# Bread and Roses Socialism #

Advancing the Alternative American Dream

I’m running for the U.S. Senate to play a leadership role in a cultural revolution – as we rethink the basics of work, time, money, meaning, and identity; as we try to find a way of living in harmony with each other and the planet, at peace, with justice, in a decent society, with lives of beauty and  work of passionate intensity.

 I don’t have all the answers, but I do bring a fleshed out vision of where we need to go, and new policy ideas to get us there. I call it Bread and Roses Socialism. It brings together simple living, beauty, and equality. Most centrally it offers new ways of understanding work, education and the purpose of an economy. It’s an outlook that emerged from my book, Graceful Simplicity: The Philosophy and Politics of the Alternative American Dream.

 

What Do We Want?

-  A less competitive society, with much less disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom.

- Less economic anxiety from early childhood through old age. Much more basic economic security. 

- A steady reduction in necessary labor time. Expanding time outside the job system.

- Simpler lives, with less stuff, more quality, less quantity, and more time for friendship, community and environmental stewardship. 

- More meaning, living our values, both at work and throughout life.

- More beauty in our lives, both natural and created, public and urban. 

- Introducing, and then progressively expanding, the realm of passion-work in the lives of all.

- Education for its own sake and for critical thinking to solve pressing problems – more history, arts and humanities. 

- Real global citizenship – taking the lead in protecting the planet and protecting the weak.

Most ambitiously, we seek a new culture, one in which personal identity and social status will have little to do with how one earns one’s money and the amount of it. We seek a culture in which identity and status will revolve around one’s passion-work, one’s values, character and excellences.

We seek to usher in a new vision of a developed society, and a new definition of progress, a culture that does not constantly aspire to more, one in which we live with a lighter footprint, yet at higher quality, one of human renaissance, one of frugal living within material limits, with an ever growing abundance of time that is truly one’s own.

Policies (See the fuller Bread and Roses policy agenda)

Guaranteed Basic Employment: A legal guarantee of at least 32 hours/week of paid employment.

Transition To the Four-Day Work Week: via a time liberty law allowing workers to opt for four days, after three years on the job.

Building the Simple Living Option: by policies to reduce the cost of meeting core economic needs —thus making the 4-day workweek viable for all. (e.g. A right to a one-time Zero-Interest Mortgage for modest or tiny new homes, Free education pre-k through college, Reducing automobile dependency by free public transit and highly subsidized alternatives to the car).

Tax transformation: that includes tax-elimination for the bottom third of households and more progressive taxation among the top 1/3, including progressive property taxes.

Schooling having less to do with the job market: with more focus on history, the arts, the humanities, and civics. With the love of books and the ability to contribute to the lives of others and to the beauty of the world as the hallmarks of successful education. 

The Right to a Childhood Without Fear: Restoring sanity in setting limits to private weapons ownership. Transforming our most crime-ridden cities, where America's least advantaged children are 24/7 in a shooting gallery. A Marshall Plan for Baltimore. Building a Wealth-Stake in Poor Neighborhoods through Home Ownership by Those at the Bottom. Rethinking Imprisonment. Using inner-city creativity and energy to bring beauty to the mean streets of America. Immediate: Two Months of Safety = Sleep-away camp for the kids in our worst cities.

Free higher education in all public colleges:  (just as I had at City College of New York). Untying education spending from personal earnings. Free public childcare as well. Education for simple living. Learning how to be happy without being rich, without having to have more than the other guy. Accessing, through education, the wealth that we have by virtue of inheriting great works of literature. This means schools in which each and every student loves to read and learns how to be “value added” to the world.

Medicare Option for All: To address, immediately, the needs of those who cannot access or afford decent health insurance from the private sector. Enhancing Medicare to cover long-term care, and gradual premium-elimination funded through tax reform, thus, untying health care from personal earnings. It also means Medicare that will be forward-looking as we transition into the health care revolution that is just beginning, one that will ultimately explode the life-span and transform the human condition.

Take Back Your Time: Worker Liberation—The right of every person to determine how much time they will put up for sale to the so-called “job creators.” Paid time-off, paid sick leave, paid family leave, paid vacation time -- minimum total of 30 days a year. Returning to the traditional Labor Agenda of a Shorter Work Week and a Short Work Day. Lowering the need for money by making America a truly efficient society in which basic needs can be met with modest incomes. Education of all young people in how to become your own non-profit, as we all become our own  “job creators."

And Beauty for All: Equal access to America’s natural and human-made beauty. Protecting the environment for the next generation. Urban Renaissance. A recognition of the unappreciated role of beauty and creativity, both in economic development and as an essential part of the good life. Creativity classes in our schools. Arts for the elderly. Funding the humanities. Not just bread, but good bread, and New York style bagels too.

Foreign Affairs: Strong engagement in promoting the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Turning to the United Nations to take the lead by establishing a Peace Commission that would engage with all of Israeli and Palestinian civil society and develop a peace agreement most likely to win referendums of the Palestinian people and of the citizens of Israel.  De-escalation in our relations with Iran. Building international structures of law and robust mechanisms of humanitarian intervention under the United Nations. Recognition of a legal right to boycott. Increased economic development assistance directed at the poor majority through basic human needs development strategies. And really, really, meaning it when we say: Never Again -- Not To Anyone -- Not Anywhere.

My campaign banner is Bread and Roses, the banner carried by women textile workers in their historic strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912.

Bread means: A Decent Society, one in which basic human needs are met, even for the poor. Roughly speaking this is Bernie Sanders. I support the goals of Bernie's agenda, and most of his policy positions.

Roses: means: Something higher. Something not attained through higher pay. It speaks to the more complex needs of people, even beaten-down immigrant workers in 1912. It is about our deeper need for beauty and meaning, about having time for life itself, time for being with old friends, time for enjoying our children when they are very young, time for being with our parents as they age, or in a book club, or for playing racquetball with an old buddy, three times a week. It's what I call the Alternative American Dream. It is captured in the bumper sticker wisdom: Nobody ever died wishing they had spent more time at the office. My campaign offers something new to progressive politics. It offers a policy agenda for Roses, one I developed in my book: Graceful Simplicity: The Philosophy and Politics of the Alternative American Dream.

I raise the most basic question of public policy: What is an economy for, anyway? My answer is this: To give us all a material platform that satisfies core needs with enough time and energy left over to allow us to turn away from the economic realm and to do those things that are most important in life, each according to their own drummer.

 

Bread & Roses