Durham, N.C. - In "Deconstructing Divestment and Duke" (Jewish Week, 12/17/2004), Wayne Firestone criticizes Duke University for providing a venue for a student-sponsored Palestine Solidarity Movement conference and for not providing an environment in which our community could "engage in a vigorous and open academic debate intended to analyze the cultural, historical and religious roots of the Middle East conflict . . .." While I am pleased that Firestone recognizes the important free speech principles that drove our decision to permit the conference, his facts are wrong about the conference as a catalyst for education.

With leadership from Jewish students and strong support from our Freeman Center for Jewish Life, Duke offered in mid-October as rich an array of perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict as probably existed anywhere in the country. Two days before the conference, Bus 19, a bus that was exploded by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem last January killing 10 innocent civilians, was exhibited near Duke Chapel, symbolizing the insanity of terrorism. The next evening, Israel advocate Daniel Pipes spoke to several hundred people under the sponsorship of the Duke Conservative Union and the Freeman Center. Later that night, a concert/rally against terrorism was held and broadcast live over the Web across the globe. I and several other leaders, including our congressman and mayor, used the occasion to condemn terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.

The weekend of the PSM conference, a series of programs included a talk by former Speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg and a panel discussion reflecting a wide range of views with rabbis and representatives of different Jewish denominations. In that discussion, Burg made the point that the worst thing that could happen to Israel would be to have American Jewry hold a single view of the issues affecting Israel and the Palestinians. The conversations at Duke, including those involving members of our Jewish community and others, reflected that diversity of opinion. Duke did what it needed to ensure safety at all of these events, not just for the PSM conference as Mr. Firestone mistakenly suggests.

Jewish students at Duke acted responsibly to turn what could have been merely a controversial event into an opportunity for true education. The conference sponsors did as well. Unlike previous PSM conferences, this conference was peaceful and there were no reports of hate speech, nor was an endorsement of a one-state solution required for attendance. Duke's students required only a code of civility. All conference events were open to the first 500 registrants, including many supporters of Israel. The vast majority of events were open to the media. The prohibitions against cameras and recording devices to which Firestone objects are not uncommon at Duke events. Earlier this fall a Nobel Laureate asked that his speech at Duke not be recorded. Our students felt that when cameras or recording devices are used, there is a greater likelihood of people playing to the audience rather than engaging in dialogue.

The PSM has rightly been criticized for saying it advocates nonviolence but also taking the position it should not tell Palestinians what tactics to use, including violence. A conference workshop was led by an official from Amnesty International, who eloquently and forcefully urged conferees to endorse a position consistent with international law that violence against civilians is unacceptable. We were proud that Duke students led efforts to get that position accepted. It failed, I am told, by only a few votes. Students tell us they will continue efforts to repeal the PSM's position.

Firestone also criticized me for not using my position as Duke's president to "issue a strong statement against racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry in any form or (a) fierce condemnation of terror." During the semester, I repeatedly condemned terrorism and violence as the antithesis of reason. I stated my abhorrence of prejudice and the disindividuating, dehumanizing logic by which it works, emphasizing that anti-Semitism has no place at Duke and will not be tolerated. I stressed that Duke's support of students who sponsor an event does not imply institutional support for their views. Well in advance of the conference, I rejected calls for Duke to divest from Israel.

The decision to hold the PSM conference at Duke required that I balance my sympathy for those who would be deeply troubled by the decision with the fundamental commitment to free speech that any university must uphold. But free speech requires more than lip service. In my welcoming address to our freshmen this year, I said, "We have to hope that the world of equal rights and mutual respect will not be a world of self-neutralized convictions and watered down consensus. Imperfect though it may still be, the new world the Civil Rights Movement created would not have come into existence without hot convictions and sharp elbows. But it requires work to get this balance right. Something I would love to see Duke pioneer ” and for this to happen it will have to be our common creation ” is a culture of positive intellectual difference or what the poet Blake called mental strife. American universities have taken far more trouble to host athletic contests than most sorts of intellectual contention. But since powerful differences shape the force-field of our lives, the sides had better learn something about each other, and, dare one hope it, learn something from each other."

Let us hope that the current window of opportunity in the Middle East will enable the people of that strife-torn land to learn how to listen, educate one another, and create real progress toward peace. And may Duke students continue to have an opportunity to be educated, as we all must be, if we are to help make that peace a reality.