By Eric Nusbaum, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Part two in a series.
At The Evergreen State College, up is down and Israel is Palestine. Supporters of Israel, a small minority on campus, are tasked with challenging the nature of a discourse they find one-sided and discomforting. To do so, they must engage a student body that is split between those highly critical of Israel and the broadly apathetic; they must convince school officials to acknowledge that a problem even exists; and they must overcome a campus culture ripe with idealism, but not so keen on self-examination.
Just like the real Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this inverted but minor local subplot has resulted in few productive developments for any parties. Off-campus groups continue to criticize the circumstances at Evergreen, citing the makeup of the faculty, a campus divestment referendum, and complaints from Jewish students. The college itself continues to officially deny the existence of any circumstances whatsoever. And the student body continues to sort things out in its own, occasionally histrionic way.
Josh Levine, a student at Evergreen and the principal coordinator of the campus Hillel chapter, believes that the problems, at least among students, is a lack of productive debate. Instead of yelling, Levine believes students on all sides of the issue should be listening.
“I can’t say there is a problem with dialogue about Israel because a problematic dialogue would still be a dialogue,” said Levine. “And there just is no dialogue.”
The Evergreen Hillel is a small, student-run, and building-less organization. For decades, it existed as the Jewish Cultural Center at Evergreen. In its first few years after affiliating with the national Hillel organization, the group stayed out of politics. (Nationally, Hillel is committed to building relationships between students and Israel.) This was to accommodate the many Jewish students who do not identify themselves as Zionists, Levine said.
Now, the Evergreen Hillel is entering the political fray — but not necessarily as an Israel-advocacy group. In an effort to foster a productive conversation about Israel in which multiple narratives are presented, Levine said the organization “is making a commitment to bring a variety of speakers with a variety of viewpoints to campus.”
Starting in 2011, Hillel hopes to present a series of lectures and discussions on Israel. The club, for which finances are tight, will rely on private donations and partnerships to fund the events. Hillel members and organizers hope they can provoke meaningful dialogue on Israel, increasing membership — which they report is growing steadily — and creating an atmosphere where students of all perspectives feel safe speaking frankly on the Middle East.
Levine said that valid Jewish opinions on Israel range from anti-Zionism to right-wing exclusionary Zionism. He used the cliché to make his point. “The official Hillel party line is two Jews, three opinions — and it’s our job to put all three out there.”
Noah Milstein put his opinion out there. He founded Students Interested in Israel Advocacy and Peace, SIIA Shalom, because he was concerned with what he was hearing about Israel on campus at the outset of the Gaza War two years ago. In 2009, SIIA Shalom, a club of six people, became a vocal and steady presence on campus — setting up a table in the student union building every day and partnering with Israel advocacy organization StandWithUs for a screening and discussion of the documentary A Case for Israel, based on the Alan Dershowitz book.
Instead of provoking reasonable discussion, SIIA Shalom’s presence on campus inflamed the debate. Milstein accused opponents of Israel of tearing down SIIA Shalom posters — one student legislator copped to the offense — and opponents accused SIIA Shalom of doing the same to theirs.
Milstein and Phan Nguyen, a student leader of Mideast Solidarity Project, a pro-Palestinian group on campus, engaged in an escalating form of gamesmanship in the campus newspaper, the Cooper Point Journal. Milstein charged MSP with intentionally disrupting SIIA Shalom meetings and with agitating students with provocative campus demonstrations — such as arranging mock checkpoints and sending students dressed as Palestinian civilians covered in blood run screaming through campus.
Nguyen, meanwhile, said Milstein engaged in personal attacks by calling him anti-Semitic in the Cooper Point Journal. In an op-ed, Nguyen accused Milstein of being an agent of the interests of off-campus groups such as StandWithUs.
“You have to understand the difference between taking a public political stance and the reactions that that will elicit,” Nguyen told JTNews. “There were a lot of students active and opposed to the kinds of things that were being propagated by Noah’s group — and that were very open about it.”
To Milstein, those reactions became too much to bear. He does not look back fondly on days sitting under an Israeli flag on the Evergreen campus. Two members of his group graduated. He and the other three left Evergreen outright.
“The majority of the responses were people coming over and openly laughing at your face or openly screaming,” he said to JTNews. “I’m a Nazi, I’m a genocidal maniac, I’m a baby killer. Everything horrible ever. Even people who were calm would start lots of conspiracy theories. The lobby. The media. The Jews control Google and the New York Times. As far as I’m concerned it was anti-Semitic.”
Levine, who wears a kippah, acknowledges he has experienced anti-Semitism at Evergreen and in Olympia. But he does not believe it will prevent the campus from waging a more productive debate about Israel. He hopes to apply the lessons of SIIA Shalom — whose opponents included many vocal Jewish students — in making Hillel’s engagement in the Middle East issue a smooth one. He said preexisting attitudes must be taken into account.
“They were being outspoken about their point of view, which was not wrong,” said Levine of SIIA Shalom. “However, they were not taking their time to educate people about their point of view. Instead they were taking every opportunity they had to act in accordance with their point of view — without the student body understanding why they held the views that they did.”
Some Jewish leaders in Olympia and Seattle believe that Evergreen students don’t understand the pro-Israel point of view because they are not hearing it from their professors. And without intervention from the school’s administration, the cycle of one-sidedness will continue, and Evergreen will remain an uncomfortable place for students who support Israel.
“There is no one really teaching the Israeli narrative,” said Wendy Rosen, director of the Seattle regional office of the American Jewish Committee. “AJC would never suggest the administration should tell the faculty what to teach. They do have a responsibility to make sure that they have a credible approach.”
The problem facing people like Rosen is that Evergreen’s administration has not acknowledged that any structural imbalance exists. College president Les Purce has met privately with Rosen and other concerned community members but has not taken any public action. The faculty at large does not see a cause for concern either.
“It’s not a systematic problem, it’s not an institutional problem,” said Steve Niva, professor of International Studies and Middle East Politics. Niva, who has been critical of Israel and has personally been criticized by pro-Israel groups, said he and his fellow faculty teach both sides of the Israel issue.
But Rob Jacobs, regional director of StandWithUs Northwest believes there is a problem with one-sidedness on campus and that it is very much an institutional problem. He sees the college’s administration as powerless over a bullying, activist faculty driven by an agenda.
“It’s beyond just Israel; it’s sort of the Lord of the Flies,” Jacobs said. “The kids without parental control all of a sudden start to run amok and lose all sense of civilization. Here you have faculty that on so many subjects seem to believe that there is a politically correct position — and nothing else is acceptable.”
One potential source of authority is another influential Olympia institution: The state legislature. Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D-Seattle), who sits on the Higher Education Committee, said he does not anticipate any legislative action this session with regard to the Israel-Palestine debate on Evergreen. He is, however, as a Jewish supporter of Israel, concerned.
“My interest is in insuring that all campuses have a healthy, open, safe environment for vigorous intellectual debate and dialogue about profoundly serious issues,” said Carlyle. “I have been uncomfortable in receiving a number of confidential communications from students who have expressed a concern that Evergreen has not seemed to foster that safe environment when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Carlyle believes the onus is on the administration to “prioritize intellectually honest dialogue.” If the administration believes that a public discussion of the issue should involve the legislature, he would “welcome the discussion freely and without reservation,” he said.
But even Sheryl Shulman, a computer science professor and the Hillel advisor, is skeptical about what she calls “vigilante” approaches to the situation at Evergreen. While she recognizes problems with the discourse and with the hiring processes at Evergreen, Shulman believes they should be handled internally. She does not believe the school is inherently anti-Semitic and is uncomfortable with the idea of outside groups, including the legislature, using Evergreen’s status as a public college as an excuse to dictate what goes on inside the classroom.
Instead, Shulman advocates bringing on a Jewish studies professor on a two-year visiting contract. She and a group of peers have lobbied the university for years to make such a hire. But in an era of budget tightening and cuts to higher education funding, Shulman fears that adding a faculty member is cost-prohibitive. In the meantime, she has enrolled in a Master’s program in Jewish studies, and hopes students can work toward a more balanced conversation and keep level heads.
“We’re not going to solve the crisis between the Israelis and the Palestinians at Evergreen,” she said.
Even still, all parties might benefit from listening to one another.
“I think the way to improve the rhetoric on campus — the way to change it from an environment of rhetoric to an environment of dialogue is that students committed to one view need to make a commitment to show up and hear the other,” said Hillel’s Levine. “And if you are undecided, you need to make a commitment to hear both.”
Read the first article in the series here.