Besides being my lifelong friend, a great all-around guy and an invaluable help to ITRZ—not to mention my new blogging venture—San Jose State University professor Jonathan Roth is a rarity these days: an academic who supports the war in Iraq. Yes, Virginia, they do exist! Indeed, Jon was--and remains--a staunch supporter of the war (but not the Bush Administration) who often challenges his students’ it’s-cool-to-be-anti-war views. Not content with simply opening the doors to campus ijtihad, Jon is organizing a good-will mission to Iraq, called Books to Baghdad. Let's let him explain the program himself:
The idea of the Books to Baghdad program is to collect academic books and other materials and ship them to Iraq to be distributed to Iraqi university libraries.
We have already collected some 40 boxes of university level books, which are being stored in a warehouse on the San Jose State University Campus. In the coming weeks, they will be mailed to the Books to Baghdad program at Alabama's Jacksonville State University. The money for the mailing has been raised through a benefit concert put on by an enterprising SJSU student, Jihad Rabah. The JSU Books to Baghdad has obtained space in a forty foot container being shipped to Iraq by International Rescue. Once there, the books will be distributed by the Iraqi Teachers Union.
Books to Baghdad intends to continue to collect and ship books, and hopes to use the Denton program, which uses space available on military cargo planes, as the fighting subsides. For more information, contact Dr. Jonathan Roth, Dept. of History, San Jose State University, San Jose CA 95192-0117, email: jroth@email.sjsu.edu, telephone: 408 924-5505. Donations are tax-deductible.
You can find a report on Baghdad's libraries here.
Having visiting universities of Baghdad and Basra myself, I can attest that the libraries there are in sore need of assistance. Anything we can do to help Jon’s efforts would find grateful recipients in the Land Between the Two Rivers.
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