Israel and the University Summit, I
The conference theme is linking Jewish distinctiveness with university values—an approach for which Askenazi’s Brooklyn organization is already well known. The conference opened with several testimonials from Hillel directors or students from around the country talking about their success in recent Hillel programs designed to produce an inclusive atmosphere that would welcome both Jewish and non-Jewish students to Hillel. But this has been the approach at Brooklyn’s Hillel as long as I have taught there, so it’s good to see Brooklyn serving as a model for positive behavior.
The plenary session was highlighted by talks from Hillel president Avraham Infeld and Professor Steven Cohen. As someone who’s focused on some of the less uplifting treatment of Israel on campus, the addresses by Infeld and Cohen were most encouraging. Infeld stressed the difficult position in which Hillel often finds itself—respecting principles of academic freedom while sometimes being criticized for not doing enough to stand up to anti-Israel attitudes on campus. Infeld said he has no problem with a college education making students uncomfortable or challenge ideological, social, or geopolitical attitudes that they brought with them to college—but only wants to see that Jewish students should be “no more uncomfortable than anyone else” on campus. This strikes me as a perfectly reasonable approach, one that too often is not applied by the professoriate. Infeld also offered some interesting statistics: 91 percent of all American Jews aged 18 to 24 attend college; of those, two-thirds are actively or moderately involved in Hillel activities; and Hillel has been among the most active student organizations in the reconstruction of the Gulf. To take one example mentioned in the conference, the University of Maryland sponsored a spring break reconstruction effort; of the 130 students, 100 were Hillel members.
Steven Cohen likewise presented a largely positive view of the current position of Jewish students on campus, citing survey data showing that despite the dramatic increase of faculty anti-Israel attitudes in the last four decades, there has been no similar increase in such beliefs among Jewish students. This strikes me as, perhaps, an overly narrow approach: while Hillel’s primary constituency is Jewish students, there also should be concern with the kind of education non-Jews are receiving about Middle Eastern affairs. As with Infeld, Cohen had some heartening statistics: Jewish Studies classes now reach around 44 percent of Jewish college students nationwide, up from 14 percent a generation ago; and while there were only 200 Jewish Studies professors in the late 1960s, there are now between 1400 and 1500. He speculated that this faculty explosion will have a ripple effect, enriching and transforming both the academic study of Israel and of Jewish life.
Cohen pointed to statistics showing that Jewish students’ religious intensity declines during their college years, but that this change is perhaps not as dramatic as first appeared, because religion and spirituality can have less institutional forms, and in any case this decline is common across most religions. Both themes were picked up in the evening plenary, which featured presentations from the presidents of Yeshiva and Georgetown, along with the chancellor of the University of Texas system, with Gwen Ifill serving as moderator.
Tomorrow, several sessions at the conference address the thornier issues of academic freedom and anti-Israel attitudes among the faculty.