The weekend began with a rumor. Then it became a declaration of the University’s commitment to academic freedom. Now campus groups are working to ensure that for three days this fall, Duke will become the world’s center of discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dozens of experts and celebrity speakers on the conflict are expected to descend upon campus Oct. 15 to 17, when the Palestine Solidarity Movement will hold its controversial annual conference at the University. Jewish groups plan to sponsor a similar number of major speakers and scholars during the weekend. Although PSM’s schedule for the weekend will not be available for several weeks, many people expect the slate of speakers to be incendiary. Jewish groups are countering with a series of events that will set forth a strong pro-Israel position during the conference.
Previous conferences have drawn large crowds of protesters, but organizers from Hiwar, the Duke student group sponsoring the event, have assured the community that the conference will be an opportunity for discussion. PSM declares that its primary goal is discovering non-violent means to end the conflict between Israeli and Palestinian people.
But pro-Israeli and Jewish groups have accused PSM of tacitly condoning terrorist activity and promoting anti-Semitism, and many people have voiced fears that all the discussion that weekend will focus on solutions that marginalize Israeli people. Jewish groups maintain that their goal is to make information from the pro-Israeli side readily available.
“We’re really trying to give students an unbiased forum,” said Rachael Solomon, president of the student board of the Freeman Center for Jewish Life.
Jewish student groups have joined with the staff of the Freeman Center to create the Joint Israel Initiative. The coalition aims to expose the campus community to views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Israel-identified groups fear might not get enough emphasis at the PSM conference.
Other groups, with political views ranging from the far left to the far right, may join the technically non-religious Joint Israel Initiative, but at the moment only the staff of the Freeman Center, the student board of the Freeman Center and Duke Friends of Israel have signed on. The Duke Conservative Union, traditionally an active pro-Israeli group, has not yet determined how or whether its members will protest the event and its ideals.
Behind the scenes
Officials at the Freeman Center began to brace for the conference early in the summer when someone confidentially forwarded an e-mail that mentioned Duke as the site for the next annual PSM gathering. Students and staff members tried to confirm the rumor for weeks but could not do so until newspapers reported that PSM planned to arrive at Duke.
While student leaders from Hiwar worked with University administrators to ensure the safety of participants and the rest of campus, the Jewish community sprang into action. Within hours of the initial publicity for the conference, the Freeman Center posted a statement on its website explaining its view of the conference as a “source of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiment.”
Despite those objections, the Freeman Center encouraged students to use the conference to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than protest the meeting. “Unfortunately, attempts to block the conference not only are unlikely to succeed, but also will draw more attention to the conference and its messages,” the notice read. “We do not want to be seen as opposing freedom of speech or exercising some kind of power over the university administration.”
A week later, Duke accepted the conference, after it had been sufficiently reassured that accusations alleging PSM’s connections to terrorist groups were unfounded. Jewish campus leaders immediately updated the official statement, reiterating the original position that free speech is important even though they found the conference’s content objectionable.
During the weekend
The Joint Israel Initiative is hoping its plan of weekend events will spur discussion among a greater array of students and prevent many people from directly protesting the conference.
With as many as 1,000 people expected to descend on Duke during the October weekend, campus Jewish groups want to keep the students who object to PSM constructively occupied. “We want to give students an opportunity to engage with each other in dialogue and not be participating in protests,” said junior Adam Yoffie, president of Duke Friends of Israel. “We don’t want to create chaos and tension between the two groups.”
But tension may be unavoidable, students said. The Joint Israel Initiative, which was created solely to deal with the PSM conference, expressed a desire to talk with any group. But the invitation is contingent on the agreement of two conditions: “We condemn the murder of innocent civilians” and “We support the need for a two-state solution with safe and secure boundaries.”
Solomon and Yoffie said they presented the conditions to Rann Bar-on, local spokesperson for PSM and a graduate student in mathematics, but he declined to sign a commitment to them.
Bar-on said that he had not seen the agreement, but that PSM would not sign such an agreement because the group does not endorse any particular solution for the conflict, nor does it condemn any actions of Israeli or Palestinian people. “As a solidarity movement, we do not consider it our place to dictate the ways by which Palestinians resist the occupation,” he said. “However, only actions that are non-violent are endorsed.”
This official “no comment” may prevent Jewish groups at Duke from directly discussing political issues with PSM members. Many Israel supporters claim PSM’s refusal to condemn violence makes the group complicit, and they see support for a two-state solution as a mutual recognition of existence for Palestine and Israel. “If one side comes into the discussion not even recognizing the other’s right to exist, then you can’t even have a discussion,” said Jonathan Gerstl, executive director of Jewish life.
Throughout the year
All year long, the Freeman Center’s programs will include a larger-than-usual slate of big-name Jewish and pro-Israeli speakers. Several academic departments will also host speakers with expertise in the Middle Eastern conflict.
“More high-profile speakers are willing to come because of the high profile of the conference,” Yoffie said. Jewish groups on campus have also received funding from national and international pro-Israeli and religious groups such as Hadassah and Hillel International, he added.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political, centered on land and sovereignty, but nearly everyone with a strong opinion about the politics admits the questions are intertwined with religion. The land is considered holy to followers of both Islam and Judaism, and Israel is frequently thought of worldwide as a Jewish state.
“The conflict is in some measure religious in nature,” said Rabbi John Friedman of Judea Reform Congregation in Durham. “I don’t see how you could separate the two.”
To that extent, some of the most vocal objections to PSM conferences in previous years have come from Jewish organizations—both on and off the hosting campuses. Individuals from the Boston Israel Action Community, a predominately Jewish group, started a petition to prevent the conference from coming to Duke.
President Richard Brodhead will visit local synagogues in early September to explain Duke’s freedom of speech policy and quell the fears of many local Jewish people, who Friedman said are still “uneasy” about having the conference at the University.
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