Dr Charles Jacobs

Website: The David Project

Charles Jacobs is a long-time activist in the Jewish community and beyond.

In 1988, he co-founded the Boston branch of CAMERA - Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America and helped make it a national organization that today functions as the premier media watchdog on the Middle East.

In 1993, Charles co-founded the American Anti-Slavery Group, which brought international attention to modern day human bondage worldwide and in particular to the enslavement of black Africans by the Islamist regime in Sudan. During Passover, 2001, Charles flew into Sudan on a rescue mission that freed thousands of jihad-slaves.

Charles has published widely on this topic including in The New York Times and the Encyclopedia Britannica. He has appeared on local and national television and radio, including NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN and PBS.

In September of 2000, Coretta Scott King presented Charles with the Boston Freedom Award for his abolitionist work. An African-American newspaper in New York has called Jacobs the "father of the modern day abolitionist movement."

Jacobs has testified before Congress three times. On October 21, 2002, Charles was invited to the White House signing of the Sudan Peace Act, which he fought for over two years, and he met and spoke with President Bush.

In response to what he calls the "existential crisis facing world Jewry," Charles has tuned his attention to the sudden emergence of a new global anti-Semitism. In the summer of 2002, Charles began The David Project which promotes a fair and honest discussion of the Middle East conflict, and which has evolved into a Center of Jewish Leadership.

The David Project became nationally known when in 2003 it persuaded Harvard University to return a $2.5 million dollar gift to the founder of an anti-Jewish, anti-American think tank in the Gulf.

In 2004, The David Project’s expose of Columbia University professors who intimidated and harassed pro-Israel students – in and out of class – made propaganda in the classroom a national story, and forced Columbia to change its grievance procedures.