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 –Duke's Palestine Solidarity Movement site offers information about the conference and its organizers.

 –Duke University Libraries has prepared a guide on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

 –The Freeman Center for Jewish Life is promoting campus discussion through a variety of events.

 
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  Conference of Palestine Solidarity Movement at Duke

Students discuss Israeli-Palestinian relations during a house
course. Photo by University Photography
Students discuss Israeli-Palestinian relations during a house course.
Photo: University Photography

The Year of Discussion
A controversial conference sparks a year-long campus debate about the Middle East, free speech and the role of the university

By James Todd

Related Item:
List of Campus Events on the Middle East

Friday, May 13, 2005 -- Last fall, on the weekend of October 16-17, the Duke campus unexpectedly became a focal point of the Israel-Palestine conflict -- only, as Fox News reported, "In this heated exchange, words and ideas were the weapons of choice."

The contentious weekend -- covered by news media from theJerusalem Post to the Chronicle of Higher Education to Al-Jazeera television -- eventually faded from the headlines, but its effects have rippled through the rest of the year at Duke.

The conference and ensuing debates were the catalyst for new courses on the Middle East, student trips to the region, increased political activism, new attempts at Arab-Jewish dialogue, several film screenings and more than a dozen talks, including six by politicians with firsthand experience with the Middle East peace process.

The story began when the Duke student group Hiwar (Arabic for "dialogue") decided to host the Fourth Annual Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) conference at Duke. According to its website, the PSM "is a diverse group of students, activists, and community members organized to promote peace, justice, and human rights for the Palestinian people."

In response, Duke’s Freeman Center for Jewish Life formed the Joint Israel Initiative, "dedicated to a proactive, supportive dialogue about the challenges facing Israel." The Joint Israel Initiative provided alternative speakers and events during the weekend of the PSM conference and throughout the year. 

Duke president Richard H. Brodhead -- garnering both criticism and praise in editorials, websites and correspondence – supported the decision to allow the conference and alternative programs to proceed, deeming them legitimate expressions of free speech and academic freedom.

"At its core, this decision tested the university’s commitment to academic freedom," he told the university’s Board of Trustees. "All ideas are not equal, but it is a foundational principle of American life that all ideas should have an equal opportunity to be expressed, and the right of free speech is not limited to speech we approve of. Universities, in particular, must give wide latitude to free speech and free debate because the pursuit of truth through the encounter of divergent points of view is the very medium of education."

After the conference weekend ended, bringing small protests, a bomb threat hoax and a few heated verbal exchanges but not the violence some predicted, Brodhead said, "We will have more programs on these issues in the future, and expect this important discussion to continue."

The discussion did continue, largely out of the media spotlight, leading Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a pro-Israel supporter who visited the campus in April, and others to praise the Duke community for its openness on the issue.

As would be expected, students and faculty who were already invested in Middle East causes were among those who participated most actively.

The stream of Middle East-related activities since the conference showed the PSM achieved its goal of drawing attention to the Israel-Palestine Conflict, said Rann Bar-On, a second-year mathematics graduate student from Israel and one of the main PSM conference organizers at Duke.

"A year ago we wouldn’t have seen 50 people come to an event given by two Israeli refuseniks," said Bar-On about a Hiwar-sponsored talk this spring by two young Israelis who refused to join the military. "And now we are seeing 50 people."

Junior Adam Yoffie, past-president of the Duke Friends of Israel student group, agreed the campus was ripe this year for presenting views on the Middle East. 

"Speakers like [Alan] Dershowitz and Dennis Ross -- it wasn’t just their name but the fact that this issue was being addressed" that drew students to their talks, Yoffie said.

A few students were inspired to take action, Bar-On and Yoffie each said. This summer, Bar-On and five other Duke students will help run summer camps in the West Bank, twice the number as last summer. Two other Duke students will intern this summer with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main American lobby for Israel -- only one had done so in the previous five years. And, for the first time, this summer, a group of about 10 Duke students will visit Israel through the Birthright Israel program, which sponsors young Jews to make their first adult trip to the country.

While participation was up in the groups involved in the PSM weekend, conversation between them was limited. Hiwar and the Joint Israel Initiative never agreed on terms for a debate.

Dialogue among people with competing positions on the Middle East Conflict came through other efforts.

Bernard Avishai, a visiting professor of management and public policy who is from Jerusalem, said he saw the contention on campus as an opportunity to "get the Middle East off the bumper stickers and into courses."

Making "common intellectual cause" with friends and colleagues with divergent views, he joined in forming a contingent he called "Professors for Democratic Peace."

"The need for debate energized us to insist on clarifying things, framing things that meet the higher standards of evidence," he said.

The group, containing professors who spoke at either the PSM conference or Joint Israel Initiative events, put on a panel discussion six weeks after the conference weekend to present differing views on issues such as divestment from Israel and the merits of a one- or two-state solution to the conflict.

Discussions within the group also led to the creation of two new courses for next year. Avishai and history professor Malachi Hacohen will together teach a class on the history of Zionism. Miriam Cooke, a professor of Asian and African Languages and Literature, and Sidra Ezrahi, a visiting professor of Judaic studies, will co-teach a course on literature about conflict by Arab and Israeli female authors.

Students also saw an opportunity to understand opposing views. Sophomores Nick Renner, who is Jewish, and Mikey Muhanna, from Lebanon, already had the idea for a Middle East discussion group before the PSM arrived on campus but waited until spring semester to launch the Arab and Jewish Students for Dialogue student group.

"We wanted to listen [to one another] above all else, without hammering each other with accusations," Renner said about the group’s approach of first building friendships and then tackling thorny political issues. "We needed a comfortable environment to foster useful dialogue."

The dozen members of the group have developed friendships this semester through dinners and social outings.

Another pair of students, sophomore Kyle Nishkian and junior Nazaneen Homaifar, agreed to lead, with guidance from history professor Ylana Miller, a half-credit "house course" on the history U.S. policy toward the Israel-Palestine conflict. The fall course gave students without strong views on the conflict a chance to form, inform and revise their opinions.

The debates surrounding the PSM conference sparked discussion on topics beyond the Middle East.

"When we saw that Duke was able to sustain a dialogue like this," said sophomore Jimmy Soni, "we thought, ‘Why can’t we expand this to other political issues?’"

In the fall, he and fellow sophomore Andrew Nowobilski founded the Duke Political Union to be a general political forum on campus and have since brought prominent speakers to campus, including North Carolina senator Richard Burr and George McGovern, the former  senator and presidential candidate.

Debating the charged issues connected to the Middle East conflict presented students with the challenge of how to respectfully disagree.

The day after the conference ended, a column in The Chronicle school paper criticized the response of some in the Jewish community to the PSM conference.  The column, which used language that echoed past anti-Semitic slanders, touched off another round of controversy. More than 300 people posted reactions to the column on The Chronicle’s website, news media returned to campus to cover the story and the Freeman Center for Jewish Life responded with a program on how historical acts of anti-Semitism color contemporary judgments of Jews.

In addressing the fallout from the column, the school’s Inter-Community Council (ICC) drafted an open letter, signed by the heads of 20 student groups, urging the university community to "engage in vigorous, respectful discussion about racial, cultural and religious identities without employing stereotypes and unfounded generalizations."

Sophomore Joel Kliksberg, chair of the ICC, said after working through emotional issues, student leaders became more mature in handling culturally sensitive situations. Since then, he said he can think of four incidents on campus "that could have blown up into big messes" but didn’t because of "measured responses" by student leaders.

One student who said she has matured from the discussions stirred up by the PSM conference is Shadee Malaklou.

Malaklou, a sophomore whose family is from Iran, wrote a Chronicle column before the conference portraying Palestinians as victims of Jewish ignorance and aggression. In her column two weeks after the conference, she bemoaned the divisions she saw arising between Jewish and Arab students, concluding, "In a break from my past self, I will love my people… and yours."

"PSM coming here brought out a lot of people’s underlying prejudices," she said. "We’re still healing after PSM."

Not everyone was so consumed by the conference and its aftermath. For plenty of students the conference was a curious circus that passed by in a weekend.

"I think that once it was over, people pretty much forgot about it," said sophomore Patrick Erker. "I certainly did."

Even so, Erker said he learned basic pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian positions just by reading the school paper and participating in student government as a senator.

"It was a good learning experience for anyone who was willing to read up on it," he said.

Duke sophomore Katie Tiedemann contributed to this story.

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