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ABOUT ME
Dr. Edward (Edy) Kaufman has served as the Executive Director of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1983. He is a Senior Research Associate at CIDCM since 1991, having served as the Center’s director in 1994 – 1996. Dr. Kaufman has dedicated a great part of his time and effort to applied research, the teaching and training of conflict resolution, and human rights both in Israel and worldwide.
INTROUCTION
Welcome to my life-site
The aim of this site is not simply to be an autobiography or memoir. I mean it to be interactive, continuously built till my last days and thereafter, through my children, grandchildren, and their future generations. I wish to record some interesting stories, anecdotes, and analyses of world events in which I modestly became an actor, above all in Latin America and the Middle East. I wish my audience to be as wide as possible among those who strive to make a difference from the bottom-up, mostly in the areas of peace and justice-or in more academic terms, universal human rights and conflict transformation. In close to five decades of teaching, I reckon myself to have had 5-10,000 students, and, if I am lucky, some may find the site by chance or through search engines. We will also connect this site to my Facebook page.
Needless to say, I am also offering the site to my family, now three generations living, and I hope that my grandchildren will interact with its contents, add their own anecdotes, and even share mine and theirs with at least their grandchildren. Very ambitious, indeed, but history is not only written from above; as with ants, a multitude of citizens of the world have been laboring, trying to build a better life for their peers and for themselves. We often refer to it as "social history", when movements, non-governmental organizations, universities, science, etc., have had an impact in the sense of progress of humanity. One step behind that, we have individuals— in my own case ,the trajectory of a scholar practitioner. I know that, like me, there are millions silently adding their personal contribution, so I wish to be one of their voices, in particular within the mentioned regions and fields.
I am focusing on what can be seen as my voluntary and professional life, and do not reveal and explore my own self and inner family ties. I do not wish to open up to such an in-depth level, nor do I think that this inner life is exemplary enough to merit sharing it in public. The core of this site is now a 14- chapter text that I still call a "work in progress". The chapters combine chronological growth in general, from a short reference to childhood and adolescence in Buenos Aires to chapters that are focusing on often parallel periods of my life- some over a long period till present, others like my years in Amnesty International, over a decade of intense action. The stories are still open ended - the interactive beauty of the Internet- , rather than a book that once printed represents in itself a closure of a period or subject matter..
At the time of writing this introduction, I am soon to be 77 years old. I hope that this site will keep me going, storytelling and more as long as possible. I wish to invite you, all readers, and surely those who have interacted with me, to find in "Edy's site" a place to share their thoughts and deeds. Perhaps, even when I will be around no longer, to recall our anecdotes together and deposit it also in this corner of the Internet. My gratitude to the few close friends and family who made this endeavor a reality, and in particular to me daughter Corinne, not only a creative/artistic designer, but above all a sensitive human being. Her good deeds towards others, and in this case, towards me are an inseparable part of her own daily life .