American Freedom Alliance Heroes Of Conscience Dinner May 18 At Ronald Reagen Library In Simi Valley

Hugh Hewitt will preside.

The honorees include actor Ed Ames and Howard and Sonya Waldow.

Anybody want to carpool to this from West LA?

On June 15 and 16 at USC, the AFA presents a conference on academic freedom.

Here are the blokes behind the AFA. The main bloke is Avi Davis. Here’s his bio:

Avi Davis is an attorney, journalist, commentator, documentarian and senior fellow of the American Freedom Alliance.

He was born in Melbourne, Australia where he graduated from the David Derham School of Law (Hons.) at Monash University in 1981.  Since his arrival in Los Angeles in 1984, he has served as the Director, Streisand Center for Jewish Cultural Arts and Director, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University.  For seven years, in the 1990s, he was the president of his own consulting company, based in Beverly Hills, which raised capital for the Israeli internet industry.

As a journalist, Mr. Davis’ commentary on Israel and the Middle East has appeared in opinion pieces, feature articles, letters and book reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Jerusalem Post, Washington Times, Melbourne Age, The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, Los Angeles Jewish Journal, Jewish Spectator, New York Jewish Week, among many other papers and magazines.  He is a senior editorial columnist for Jewsweek.com, a contributing editor of Rapport Magazine and the former literary editor of the Jewish Spectator. His radio commentary is heard regularly throughout North America and he has been a television commentator on the Middle East for CNN, Fox News and Adelphia Cable. 

Mr. Davis lectures widely and teaches a course in  the Arab-Israeli conflict at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and a course in journalism at UCLA.   He has been awarded professional designation certificates in the fields of journalism, public relations and fund raising from UCLA.  His latest documentary –Jenin:  The Battle for Truth, was released in September 2003. 

He is currently the Senior fellow of the American Freedom Alliance – a Los Angeles based organization formed to promote  freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry and freedom of conscience among the practitioners of the world’s religions.

 In 2003-04 he studied at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Mr. Davis owns a home in the Old City of Safed in Israel and serves on the boards of several local and national Jewish organizations.