JOAN MANDELL is the director of Olive Branch Productions, based in Detroit, Michigan, where she is a documentary producer, curator and educator. Her film and video career spans two decades and includes films for PBS, UNIFEM (United Nation's Women's Organization) and international broadcast. Her award-winning films, Tales from Arab Detroit, Gaza Ghetto, and Voices in Exile are widely taught on US college campuses. As a university educator, Joan Mandell has taught film and video production, international film history and media literacy at the University of California/Irvine, the College for Contemporary Studies, Detroit and to college students traveling around the world through the Semester-at-Sea program. Joan Mandell has lived and worked in the Middle East for nearly a third of her adult life. She was an instructor of English as a second language at Birzeit University, editor at Al Fajr newsweekly and a Fulbright Scholar to the West Bank/Palestine. She served on the editorial board of Middle East Report for two decades and has been an active member of the New Day Films cooperative for 12 years. Joan Mandell was a Felton Scholar in Media Literacy and an Affiliated Scholar at the von Grunebaum Center for Near East Studies at UCLA. She earned an MFA in Theater, Film and Television at UCLA.

ILAN PAPPÉ is a fellow of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the director of the European Center for Palestine Studies and the co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. His recent books include: Gaza in Crisis (Haymarket, 2011), with Noam Chomsky; The Husaynis: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (California University Press, 2011); and The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale Univeristy Press, 2011). He is also the author of A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld 2007). A native of Haifa, Professor Pappé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 and 2000, and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006. Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006.

READINGS:

Please join us to hear the story of Miko Peled's personal journey from his upbringing as the son and grandson of Israeli founders, with a strong belief in the Zionist ideal of a Jewish state, to his work today as an activist for peace who advocates transforming what he calls the Israeli  apartheid system into a secular democracy, where Israelis and Palestinians will live as equal citizens.

Co-sponsored by the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, American Jews for a Just Peace-Madison, the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Playgrounds for Palestine-Madison, Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, and Students for Justice in Palestine-UW Chapter.

For more information on Miko Peled and The General's Son, please visit http://mikopeled.com/

A book signing will follow the talk
 
The event is free and open to the public