Anthony Bing is Emeritus
Professor of English and Chair of Peace and Global Studies Emeritus
from Earlham College. He retired after thirty one years at
Earlham in 2001. While at Earlham he also served as the national
Executive Director of the Peace Studies Association, 1994-2001.
Educated at Haverford College, Oxford University and the University of
Michigan, Bing was a teacher of Shakespeare, Modern French Novel,
Old and Middle English and Literature of the Middle East. In the
Peace Studies field he offered courses in the theory and practice of
nonviolence, introduction to peace study, war and literature, and the
contemporary conflict in the Middle East..
He spent a good portion of his career developing programs in
international education, especially in the Middle East, where he taught
at the American University of Beirut (1967-69) and was
chairman of he Great Lakes Colleges Association’s Middle East
Advisory Committee (1970 -76). In 1982 Prof. Bing began the
Great Lakes Jerusalem Program, a semester of study of the
Palestinian/Israeli conflict. This program involved living with
Israeli and Palestinian families and having courses taught by Israeli
and Palestinian professors.
Based on that model, Bing set up a Northern Ireland Program in
1991, also with a peace focus, that studied the origins and development
of the catholic/protestant conflict in Northern Ireland. For his
work in Northern Ireland he was given an award by the British
government in 1993. In 1992 he was selected by the Peace Studies
Association as its Peace Educator of the year.
Bing has written widely on the conflict between Palestine and Israel,
most notably a book about Joseph Abileah, Israel’s first
conscientious objector. He also co-authored a 2004 work, When the Rain Returns, a study of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
He has served on the Board of the American Friends Service Committee,
has clerked its National Peace Education Committee and its Middle East
Peacebuilding Program Advisory committee. Currently he is on the
AFSC’s Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
In May of 2007 he co-led an AFSC delegation to
Israel/Palestine that commemorated the 40th anniversary of
Israel’s Occupation of Palestine. It was his
thirtieth visit to that troubled land.
In retirement he has been clerk of the Swannanoa Valley Friends Meeting
and recently has offered courses at Warren Wilson and at McCall
College. He currently clerks the Western Carolinians for Peace
and Justice in the Middle East.