Dateline San Diego: On Oct. 3rd UCSD hosted the traveling panel of SPME experts. Despite the late hour the room was full, the presentations were multi-faceted and informative, the audience seemed engaged, people asked questions, and the whole event was fluent and highly professional. Not only I felt that this was educationally important, but it was for me a point where academics, students and community came closer together then ever to unite around the SPME vision. I felt that this is the beginning of a realization of change in the campus culture of the discourse about the Middle East peace process. But alas, not a day passed and I started hearing voices coming from some Jewish students that for them this event was not exactly what it seemed to me. “They were all Jewish Professors”, “They did not bring a Palestinian”, “They were telling Jewish jokes”, “They referred to Israel as “we”, were the type of remarks I heard.

But was it wrong, I ask? When SPME brought an Arab speaker, Noni Darwish, many of the Jewish students did not show up. “She is blamed as Islamophobic,” was the explanation. So our students did not dare be associated with such a controversial figure…

Then I thought about the Palestinians and envied their great determination and unity. Or maybe I shivered – what a horrible determination and unity! Today, when UCSD organizes a protest against the conviction of the 11 UCI disruptors of Ambassador Oren’s lecture I ask: who is right and wrong here? Looking through the court evidence of the Irvine 11, one sees an orchestrated plan with “Disruptors”, “Recruits”, and brothers and sisters committed to the single goal of obstructing the ambassador’s freedom of speech. And when Palestinians bring Norman Finkelstein and other radical Jewish speakers to participate in Al-Awda’s propaganda on campus, there is a unity of Jews and Moslems bashing Israel. But when SPME brings a carefully crafted, academically solid and politically neutral set of professors, or when it brings an Arab who dares criticize the other side, I hear voices that this is biased. We definitely still have a long way to learn how to reach, educate and show our students where the academic values of balance and civil expression reside. Someone still needs to write a guide for the perplexed…