Book me today ...
Defining the Moderate Arab/Palestinian Voice

NAMED "Best of the Best" Presenters/Speakers by LACONI
(Library Administrators Conference of Northern Illinois, 2007)

Ray Hanania will restore your faith in hope, that peace is possible in the Middle East. Defining a moderate Palestinian-Arab voice, Hanania takes audiences through up to 2 hours of humor, serious discussion and an informative question and answer session. Audiences leave encouraged about the future.

My presentations offer background on a variety of topics but explore issues that lead audiences to understand how Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs and Jews can come together in peace and compromise, the settlement of Arabs in America, Arab American literature and history, Arab American journalism, extremism and how to fight it, Arab Christians and more. As a longtime advocate of peaceful negotiations and compromise, I consistently speak against violence, offering alternative solutions that have fairly analyzed the actions of both Palestinians and Israelis. The presentations are based in my years of experience as a professional journalist and later as a political activist for Palestinian causes and support of the peace process. This includes serving as the National President of the Palestinian American Congress, an adviser both to President Clinton during the Oslo Peace Accords (participating in several meetings with the president in the 1990s) and as a media adviser both to President Yasir Arafat and to the Palestine Media Center headed by Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo in 2001. The media work I do is not intended as a consultant to develop issues, but to train individuals on how to correctly participate in the media system. For Arab and Muslim audiences, that means understanding mainstream American journalism and the media system, and for others, how to speak to the Arab American and Muslim American community through the existing ethnic media. Previously distributed by Creators Syndicate (2002-2005), Hanania's now self-syndicates his columns which "define the moderate Palestinian and Arab voice." They are carried in newspapers in the Middle East including the Saudi Arabian Arab News, Jerusalem Post, and YnetNews (Yedioth Ahronoth), and on the Internet's most popular web site, MidEastYouth.com. They can be found in the Dallas Morning News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Detroit News, the Houston Chronicle, the Arizona Republic, Newsday, The New York Daily News, the Oregonian, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Southwest News-Herald, and the Chicago regional Arlington Heights Daily Herald Newspaper. Hanania is a co-founder of the National Arab American Journalists Association, and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists Diversity Comittee and the Asian American Journalists Association Media Watch Committee. Hanania have received three (3) Society of Professional Journalism Awards for Column Writing (Chicago Headline Lisagor Award) in 1985, 2003 and 2006. In November 2006, he was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New American Media Association. Contact Ray today if you are interested in scheduling a presentation. "We can't be afraid of peace. If we can laugh together, we can live together! If we can listen to each other, too, we can find a way to live together!"

UPCOMING HANANIA APPEARANCES Check Ray's comedy appearances with the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour? Listen to Ray's live radio show on WCEV 1450 AM, Tuesday & Thursday from 4 to 6 PM -- go to www.RadioChicagoland.com for more info Watch Ray's Comcast Cable TV program every Friday night on Channel 19 at 7 or 8:30 PM, depending on where you live -- go to www.TVChicagoland.com for more info. May 17 & 18, 2008: Chicago Faces & Places Tours (two each day) of the Chicago Arab community May 20, 2008: Indian Trails Library, "Arabs of Chicagoland" June 11-12: Community Media Workshop at Columbia College ... GET MORE INFO ON APPEARANCES?

Speech to Birzeit University Journalism Department Oct. 12, 2004
Read story?

RAY HANANIA'S "POWER OF HUMOR"
PowerPoint Lecture -- Get More Info ?