Jim Luce, former investment banker and founder of the UN-affiliated Orphans International, recently shared his thoughts on CBI's U.S.-Muslim Engagement Initiative in Huffington Post's "One Year After Cairo Speech: The U.S.-Muslim Engagement Initiative." In it, he calls the the Initiative's report, "Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World", "an integral tool for conflict resolution and required reading for many senior White House and State Department staffers" and commends The U.S.-Muslim Engagement Initiative "for its ongoing efforts to make peace possible."
The Initiative was originally conceived in 2007 as the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project — a collaboration between the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) and Search for Common Ground [1] — with the objective of creating a coherent, broad-based and bipartisan strategy and set of recommendations to improve relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world; and communicating and advocating this strategy in ways that shift U.S. public opinion and contribute to changes in U.S. policies, and public and private action. In 2008, after 18 months of dialogue between a diverse, senior, bipartisan and inter-faith group of 34 American leaders, the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project released its “Changing Course” report and included a 'Call to Action' for the next President.
CBI has since partnered with Convergence, the Howard Gilman Foundation [2], and the Institute for Resource and Security Studies [3] to create the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Initiative, continuing the work of the Project by promoting action-oriented, cross-societal dialogue among thought leaders, opinion leaders and decision-makers from the U.S. and Muslim societies. The Initiative has launched a multi-year effort focusing on leaders in Muslim societies and the U.S. who have yet to engage with, or successfully participate in dialogue with, their counterparts across cultural and national divides.
Read Jim Luce's "One Year After Cairo Speech: The U.S.-Muslim Engagement Initiative". [4]
Visit the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Initiative website. [5]
Learn more about the Project's Report "Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World". [6]
View the 2-part "Link TV" documentary on the creation of the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project below.