Carter Center Board Members Resign Over His Book

From the Wall St. Journal:

Fourteen members of an advisory board at the Carter Center resigned today, concluding they could "no longer in good conscience continue to serve" following publication of former President Jimmy Carter's controversial book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid."

"It seems that you have turned to a world of advocacy, including even malicious advocacy," the board members wrote in a letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. "We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support. Therefore it is with sadness and regret that we hereby tender our resignation from the Board of Councilors of the Carter Center effective immediately."

...Some of the Carter Center board members who quit in protest have known Mr. Carter for decades. William B. Schwartz Jr., whose name is on the list of those resigning today, was U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas during the Carter administration. S. Stephen Selig III, chairman and president of Atlanta real-estate developer Selig Enterprises Inc., was a top White House aide to Mr. Carter who led outreach to the business community. Mr. Selig was chairman of the host committee for the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Steve Berman, 51 years old and one of the board members who quit, said in an interview that the departing members "were greatly concerned that the book was not steeped in fact. It departed radically from his role and went to one-sided advocacy." Recent media comments by Mr. Carter "have been most disturbing," he added.

The resigning board members also include: Michael J. Coles, chairman and chief executive of Caribou Coffee Co., Minneapolis; Barbara Babbit Kaufman, founder of Chapter 11 Discount Bookstores, a bookstore chain based in Atlanta; and Liane Levetan, former DeKalb County, Ga., chief executive. That is the top elected position in a county that includes a sliver of Atlanta.

Bravo.

Also, from The Forward:

The rabbis of America’s largest synagogue movement have canceled a planned visit to the Atlanta-based Carter Center in response to the publication of former President Jimmy Carter’s controversial new book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last month, the Forward has learned, leaders of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, a 1,500-member group representing Reform rabbis, called off a scheduled tour of the Carter Center after the public reaction to Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” reached a fevered pitch, and an interdenominational group of rabbis expressed disappointment over a meeting with the former president. CCAR members were to have had the opportunity to visit the center as part of an optional day of activities preceding the group’s annual conference, which will be held in Atlanta from March 11 to 14.

Carter’s book “used language and images and terms that have the effect of escalating anti-Israel or even anti-Jewish feeling,” said the CCAR’s president, Rabbi Harry Danziger, in an interview with the Forward. “This is both a statement to President Carter that we hope he will enter into dialogue about what we think of as misrepresented facts about the Middle East, and, at the same time, our own statement that we feel that this was an unfair attack on Israel and we did not want to be part of a visit to the center because of it.”

Comments

[Bookworm]

I'm just terribly disappointed that Brandeis caved in to Carter's demand that his teeny little brain not be taxed by a debate, and that, instead, it invited him to give his speech unchallenged by facts and logic. Carter is a very bad man -- something I remarked in a post at my blog that generated almost 250 comments. He was a bad President, and he's a bad, rude, loutish, probably senile ex-President.

[AndyJ]

He is worse than "bad". He is a person trying to do "good" with no humility to his own limitations. He simply wishes to do something that will trump Nixon in the history books. He will reach in any direction, say anything, lend his name to anything.

If you can find the tapes of the Nixon funeral, watch Carter as Nixon is eulogized for his foreign policy success. You can watch his corruption begin and his involvement with Habitat for Humanity lessen. Jealousy and envy are not pretty

[Gail]

"If you can find the tapes of the Nixon funeral, watch Carter as Nixon is eulogized for his foreign policy success."

I looked, but neither YouTube nor Google has the Nixon funeral unfortunately. I remember watching it, but didn't notice Carter's expression at the time.

Just read this article which says that Carter IS going to speak at Brandeis after all. Alan Dershowitz has vowed to be there and is going to try his best to wipe Carter's sh*t-eating grin off his face. I hope YouTube gets ahold of that video, because I would love to see it.