The following is reprinted with permission from The Herald-Sun:

September 10, 2004

Duke's Odysseus

Duke University President Richard Brodhead's affirmation of his predecessor's refusal to divest in firms with military ties to Israel wisely continues a policy that is by no means as simple as it might appear. Speaking Wednesday night to more than 100 faculty, students and others at Duke's Freeman Center for Jewish Life, Brodhead said he could detect no consensus on divestiture at the university and, furthermore, could not imagine that consensus on the issue would arise.

Last year, then President Nan Keohane confronted demands for divestiture by saying such a move would be "too blunt an instrument" when there was no campus consensus on who bears the greater blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At the time, of course, Keohane didn't face what Brodhead does in October, a controversial meeting at Duke of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM). In one of his first decisions since taking office July 1, Brodhead said PSM could hold its annual national meeting Oct. 15-17. Brodhead did so over objections from Jewish groups denouncing PSM as an organization that endorses terrorism and the destruction of Israel.

For Brodhead, allowing PSM to meet at Duke while affirming the university's policy against divestiture is roughly the equivalent of sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, two monsters of Greek myth that threatened Odysseus and his crew.

Based on what we've seen so far, Duke Universty's new president is a deft navigator on wine-dark seas, too.

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