Our Universities and the Middle East

200 Words of Wondering

What’s happening in Israel and Gaza is catastrophic for the real human beings that live there. Many have written about this with clearer eyes than I can. But I do know this: America sure has a strange way of talking about such crises, especially in circles far removed from the devastation.

What’s our focus been when discussing Israel, Hamas, and Palestinians? Universities and liberal students! Our usual bugaboo!

I’ve read countless articles about “campus responses” to these events, the petitions signed by boisterous students at the Ivy schools. And now, College Presidents are called before congress, which has resulted in one high-profile resignation at the University of Pennsylvania. Since this is “200 Words of Wondering,” what direct impact do American student orgs and college administrators have on what is occurring in Gaza and Israel? Does Elizabeth Magill speak with Benjamin Netanyahu? Of course not. We don’t care about our universities unless there’s political sides to be taken. Fox News has long made a living off such coverage. Now, stories about the Presidents of Penn and Harvard sit on the front pages of The New York Times and Washington Post. Why? Whose lives do these people save in a war? Anyone’s?

Image Credit: Ken Cedeno/Reuters