One of my favorite opportunities offered to Tufts students is the wide array of events we are invited to participate in. When I saw that there would be an event on “The Israel-Hamas War and Jewish Life on Campus,” my curiosity was piqued. I did not want to miss hearing from speakers who connected international events with our local community, especially amid rising antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism. I came to this event ready to learn and to hear perspectives both familiar and new to me. Unfortunately, this event fell short of my expectations of this institution.
Sponsors for the event included a multitude of departments. I was pleased to see that my majors, international relations and Middle Eastern studies, were represented among the sponsors. Meanwhile, while the inclusion of the Department of History was relevant, speakers did not once address the history of the longstanding Israeli occupation of Palestine in their talks, thereby failing to provide critical context for the Oct. 7 attacks.
The talk repeatedly cited “dialogue” as key to overcoming the polarizing discourse over the past months. The program tried to frame itself as an effective model for dialogue in the face of on-campus divisions — I am disappointed to say I disagree. As someone who is extensively trained in dialogue facilitation by Professor Jonathan Garlick in the Science and Civic Action course here at Tufts, I did not see any of the standard protocols implemented within this discussion that would have encouraged mutual learning between the panelists and audience members. Therefore, it felt much more like a two-hour long lecture. Speakers presented similar views without engaging each other in conversation about their respective topics. While audience members were allowed to ask questions at the end, the responses were restrictive, and I did not feel that they encouraged the productive space for continued learning and interaction that dialogues usually do. Typically, dialogues also have community norms that are agreed upon at the start and returned to throughout the discussion, such as speaking from the “I” perspective to ensure participants share their personal experiences and feelings. Without rigorous and mutually agreed upon norms, the event was hardly a “dialogue.” Additionally, I did not feel that the speakers provided sufficient citations and evidence for the claims they made or explained them in ways that felt accessible to the audience. Tufts teaches us to conduct critical research and engage with academic literature, so it was jarring to witness an approach that fell so far short of the standards of this institution.
The first speaker was the only presenter who displayed his own research in his talk titled “Was the October 7th Terrorist Attack Strategic?” He introduced four frameworks for understanding terrorist motivations and evaluating their efficacy, only to ignore three, and his brief explanation of his methodology left me unable to understand it. The second speaker at the event, who addressed the question, “Could Israel Have Fought the War in Gaza Differently?,” similarly failed to provide sources. He made contradictory statements, arguing that Israel can’t avoid killing civilians because of Gaza’s dense urban areas, then claiming that civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas because it embeds itself in civilian infrastructure. He argued that “civilians die in war … it’s unavoidable,” justifying the over 33,000 Palestinians that have been killed by the Israeli army that allegedly deliberately targets civilian shelters, hospitals and aid workers. This is apparent from the three strikes against clearly marked moving aid vehicles carrying seven employees with the World Central Kitchen on April 2. He repeatedly attempted to justify the actions of the Israeli military against civilians by calling the war an “impossible” situation. His talk echoed how the war was an “imperfect solution to an impossible problem” to justify the actions of the military. Yet he failed to reference the principles of International Humanitarian Law, which were created to limit the effects of armed conflict on civilians. It was an insult to the location we were seated in, given that The Fletcher School is one of the leading institutions in the field of international relations.
The final speaker who addressed the Israel-Hamas War spoke about “Violence Against Women in the Hamas-Israel Conflict.” Her talk was the hardest to sit through because of the manner of her approach. Addressing such a complicated issue demands rigorous citation of sources, which she did not do. Despite the sensitive nature of her topic, she failed to include a content warning and her use of graphic and explicit language seemed to upset many in the audience. Her speech left me in shock and ran directly counter to my previous experiences at university events that addressed sexual and gender-based violence with the care and competency required. How can we foster a space for “dialogue” if students are too distressed to effectively engage and exchange ideas?
The only speaker to directly discuss “Jewish Life on Campus” was the fourth speaker of the group, who spoke about “Assessing the Campus Climate Post October 7.” Her presentation repeatedly featured posters from Palestine solidarity actions to demonstrate what she alleged to be the increasingly unfriendly environment on campus for Jewish students. She similarly did not properly cite any of the images she used in her slides and repeated the baseless accusation that protesters in the images she showed were “Hamas supporters,” even though nothing in the photos explicitly showed that. In doing so, she correlated the image of the Palestinian flag and Palestine solidarity activists with Hamas, grossly misrepresenting reality. This is only one example of the many racist misconfigurations the speaker repeatedly made. This also effectively erases the experience of Jewish students who are supportive of or participate in such demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians and Palestinian liberation. Consequently, this event, both in speakers and in content, erased a large swathe of student and faculty voices on campus, running counter to the very values upon which the event claimed to be built.
Given the undeniable importance of hearing diverse voices when discussing global affairs and life on the Tufts campus, the university ought to be doing more to leverage its own resources and spearhead change from within. The event was co-sponsored by the the Academic Engagement Network, whose executive director spoke as one of the panelists, and whose mission is to “mobilize networks of university faculty and administrators to counter antisemitism, oppose the denigration of Jewish and Zionist identities, promote academic freedom, and advance education about Israel.”
However, Tufts hosts a plethora of qualified professors, especially ones with highly accredited research and expertise in the Middle East, as one speaker even highlighted. Our faculty represent diverse viewpoints and should be given large-scale platforms to speak with each other as they guide our community towards a better understanding of current events. Rather than listening to people from an external organization lecture about how massacres are part of war and unfortunately can’t be stopped, speakers invited and sponsored by departments should be pushing us to think critically about the human destruction we are currently witnessing in Gaza. I have faith that our faculty can help facilitate more productive learning, but it is up to the Tufts administration to support them and give them the platform and resources to plan more events. In a time of combative divisiveness, we need all members of our community to use their voices and push against silence and intimidation to engage in real dialogue.
