17吃瓜

17吃瓜2025鈥擲trengthening Our Foundation | Expanding Horizons鈥擜 Call to Action

In 2025, 17吃瓜will be hitting its 125 year mark. Yes, fellow 17吃瓜members and friends, our quasquicentennial is nearly upon us, and we have听cause to celebrate!

A first cause for celebration听is that 17吃瓜members continue to be engines of research, education, publication, and engagement about the history and cultures of the Near East and the wider Mediterranean world.

This work has never been more needed. So, amid celebration, we confront challenges. Worldwide threats to cultural heritage are a great concern, because we know that targeting people鈥檚 cultural heritage is a first step toward violence and extremism. Also, such losses cannot be undone. The humanities bring this into focus, yet dollars to fund these departments and this research are being siphoned off elsewhere. Some professional organizations focused on past human experience are shrinking. Not so for ASOR!

This is a second cause for celebration. Our membership is expanding. 17吃瓜is in solid financial shape. You have created a foundation for positive change and action.

To continue this momentum, 17吃瓜has embarked on a grand challenge, a $5 million dollar鈥�$5,000,000鈥攆undraising initiative.听Our third cause for celebration听is that generous 17吃瓜members already have pledged or given $2.7 million dollars, with more coming.

This is a call to action, asking you to help shape the future through the discovery, documenting, and protecting of cultural heritage in innovative ways. I ask you to think how you can join in this effort to equip 17吃瓜to meet the challenges of this moment.

Your gift of support to 17吃瓜makes a real difference. With your participation, 17吃瓜can:

1. Increase membership support:听You can strengthen and widen ASOR鈥檚 geographic impact throughout the Middle East and North Africa with scholarships, research fellowships and excavation project grants including citizens from countries that lack resources.
   2.听Widen and expand ASOR鈥檚 publications:听You can ensure that 17吃瓜continues to disseminate knowledge and educate the public in an economic climate where support for scholarship is shrinking.
   3.听Make 17吃瓜more accessible to everyone:听You can address financial need for access in North America, North Africa, the Middle East, and around the world. With you, 17吃瓜can set an example with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that span language and cultural divides.
   4.听Grow Cultural Heritage Initiatives:听You can support cultural heritage stabilization, documentation, and mitigation efforts. You can guarantee that 17吃瓜continues to be seen as a world leader in protecting heritage and ensure the continuation of education and stewardship programs that combat violent extremism and misuse of heritage by authoritarian rulers.
   5.听Develop Greater Online Access:听You can fund innovations in the rapidly growing field of online and virtual resources to make research accessible to everyone with a computer, tablet, or phone.
   6.听Expand the Friends of 17吃瓜Programs:听You can help underwrite education and outreach programs that will broaden ASOR鈥檚 membership and bring non-academic supporters with an interest in the ancient world to our organization.
   7.听Strengthen the Foundation of ASOR鈥檚 Operations:听You can safeguard ASOR鈥檚 work to 2050 and beyond through the Annual Fund, or with endowment gifts to sustain operational staffing and capital needs at the James F. Strange Center, or through efforts to make 17吃瓜more sustainable.

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These are but a few ideas. Studies of the human past have never faced greater obstacles, but 17吃瓜has the financial stability and talent to find innovative solutions. Each of us is a critical part of this effort. If you and I do not respond to this call to action to shape the future of our profession and document and protect cultural heritage in innovative ways, who will?听YOU CAN BE PART OF THIS HISTORIC MOMENT, CREATING CHANGE & MAKING A LEGACY. ORGANIZATIONS THRIVE BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU.听Please join in celebrating our 125th year with 鈥�17吃瓜2025鈥� Strengthening Our Foundation | Expanding Horizons鈥擜 Call to Action.鈥�