According to this 25th of November, 2023 release, problems dealing with Jewish, Muslim, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students are becoming more and more common at university campuses. The students over at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire recently voiced that they still felt safe and were crediting a part of that feeling to the college’s unique solution to the tensions – talking about it! Sophomore Ramsey Alsheikh, a Muslim with a Palestinian background, found himself in the middle of discussing the 1967 war between Israel and Arab states just three days after the horror attacks on Israel and the consequent strikes in Gaza. The class consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian students and they had been discussing Arab and Israeli connections all semester; now those issues were playing out once again, in real time.
Dartmouth senior Owen Seiner is Jewish and says the professor-led conversations on school have actually helped ease tensions following the Oct. 7 horror attacks on Israel and the counterattacks in Gaza.NBC News
“There was a sort of silence. Like a sense of, nearly like catastrophe,” Alsheikh remembers. “Then we discussed it. We unloaded it. … The raw weight of the occasion was still in all of our minds. We were simply sort of processing it together, I think. It was something.”
His teacher, Susannah Heschel, a Jewish Studies teacher, then took the exact same idea to the remainder of the college. Days later on she assembled an online forum led by Jewish and Middle Eastern research studies teachers and leased a space for 70 individuals. Hundreds revealed up and roughly 600 signed up with by livestream.
The article references the extraordinary efforts taken by the college to come together in support of each other while embracing the complexities of the situation, showing that it’s possible to condemn an action while also understanding what led up to it. Dartmouth has advised that they offer 24/7 therapy if any student feels triggered to seek outside help. With the increasing tensions, the college president is encouraging students to engage in the community dialogues to promote understanding and acceptance of different perspectives.
A key highlight of the panel was an appearance of Ezzedine Fishere, a Muslim professor of Middle Eastern Studies and former Egyptian diplomat to Israel. On seeing how many individuals arrived, Fishere admitted to initially feeling he feared the forum, worried that things might escalate. All university dialogues, inside and outside the lecture halls and always being respectful and feeling safe is the goal. So the next time you’re on campus, make sure to speak up and have your thoughts heard.
