Samuel M. Edelman is one of the founding faculty members of the new Academic Council for Israel, is its Executive Director and is a visiting professor of Israel Studies and Zionism at University of Miami. He is the former Director of the Israel on Campus Coalition Academic Affairs Department and the National Academic Network and its Fellows Program. Edelman has served as the Executive Director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He is also a CSU Chico Emeritus Professor of Jewish, Israel and Holocaust Studies as well as Rhetoric and Communication Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Arizona and an MA and BA from Pennsylvania State University, University Park Campus. In addition to being one of the key academics fighting against BDS on campuses and in academic professional organizations, he continues to lecture and teach on subjects such as Anti-Semitism, Genocide, Holocaust and Resistance, the Arab Israeli Conflict, Zionism, the Arab Spring, The Changing Map of the Middle East and more. Edelman is the Co-Director of the California State Center of Excellence in Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance Education. He has numerous articles and book chapters on topics such as the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Effort, the Holocaust and Cultural Resistance, the Arab Israeli conflict, Anti-Semitism And The New Left, Jewish Christian Dialogue, the History of Anti-Semitism, Jewish Rhetoric, and Zionism and Jewish Identity.