[1] It was founded by columnist Dorothy Thompson, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Harry Emerson Fosdick, and 24 other American educators, theologians, and writers.
In 1948, Virginia Gildersleeve, Kermit Roosevelt, Harry Fosdick, and others had founded a similarly oriented Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land, which was subsumed into the new organization.
][2][5] In appealing for funds form American supporters “free from political pressure and racial and religious discrimination,” the AFME is reported to have stated that “most Americans… never had an accurate picture of Middle East.”[6] The organization was active during the Cold War, and worked to place gifted international students in American universities.
[1][7] In 1953, the AFMA opened up an office in Tehran in order to place Iranian students in "proper Protestant colleges and universities" in the United States, during a period of the Abadan Crisis.
[8] The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a Jewish news agency, noted that the organization "does not include a single Jew among its charter members, but has among them numerous outspoken Anti-Zionists,"[6] and reported on a full page ad taken by the new organization in "the New York press" on June 27, 1951, reiterating its advertised purposes as follows:[6] While at the time of the JTA's reporting it was accurate in that no one identifying as Jewish was part of the AFME, the (eventually-controversial) Reform rabbi Elmer Berger joined its national council in 1952; before this, the AFME was associated, via some of its charter members' associations, with other Arabist/anti-Zionist organizations with notable Jewish membership such as the American Council for Judaism and the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land.