Since October 7, I've been listening to Israeli media and American propagandists claim that they are the real victims during the current conflict and that all of this protest against them is simply anti-semitism. All of this chatter reminded me of an incident from 16 years ago I had all but vanished from my memory. But all this Israeli victimization talk caused me to recall the time when the university I worked for, Drew University, was accused of victimizing a student who wanted to study abroad in Israel.
What happened, back in 2007, anyway?
I was the Director of International Education at Drew University, a smallish private university in a New Jersey suburb of New York City. I was in charge of all students who went abroad and I managed several Drew programs and monitored about 180 third-party programs run by universities and organizations all over the world, including a few programs in Israel.
We had a policy at Drew, if a nation suddenly fell under a State Department Warning, a student from Drew would not be allowed to study at a program in that nation. During that time, Drew had its own wonderful study abroad program in Eritrea, the only program of its kind in that country offered by anyone in 2007. It was run by two faculty members, who were native Eritreans and they provided our students with an extraordinary immersion into a country that had just been formed after a lengthy war with Ethiopia.
One day, without warning, the State Department put out a warning for Eriteria, so we had to cancel the program for that year, much to the dismay of our faculty. They said the warning was unjustified and that Eritrea was, at that time, no more dangerous than New York City. But, we felt that Drew could not take on the potential liability if something unfortunate occurred to our students while they were studying in Eritrea, so we were compelled follow our policy and to cancel the program.
At about that time the conflict in the Palestinian territories had heated up a bit, and spilled over into Israel. As a result the State Department put out a warning for Israel and the Occupied Territories. There were three programs operated by Israeli universities that Drew students could attend, receive transfer credits for their abroad studies, and they could also use their Drew financial aid for these programs. But, once the warning was issued, we would not automatically, by policy, take on the risk of allowing a student to study in Israel, as was also the case in Eritrea and several other countries too.
That's when the fun started. One of our Drew students wanted to study in Israel. He was highly offended when I told him about the policy. When I said that his Israeli studies could not happen at that time because of the State Department warning, and needed to be delayed, he demanded that we allow him to attend. I asked him to write an appeal to our Dean for reconsideration and he did, but it was denied. After all, we had cancelled our program in Eritrea, because of the warning issued for that country, even with faculty reassurances that everything was reasonably safe there.
After the student's appeal was denied, we were suddenly flooded with a lobbying campaign. Local rabbis called the university advocating on behalf of the student, Jewish donors to Drew threatened to withhold their gifts if we didn't reconsider. Students from Hillel, the Jewish organization on campus, stopped by my office to insist we allow them to study in Israel no matter what. One student even suggested I might be anti-semitic because I wasn't advocating for Israeli study, and would not accept my explanation that our policy was based on a desire to maximize student safety, not to punish a particular student or nation. There was a clear sense of entitlement ("We should study in Israel because we demand it") and victimization ("You are doing this specifically to us, because we are connected to Israel.")
As you can see in the above article that I was able to find online, even 16+ years later, Israel's most prominent newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, took up the student's case as did other media outlets. It was incredible how one supposedly-aggrieved study abroad student in an obscure New Jersey university could marshal pro-Israel forces around the globe to rally around his cause.
The commotion and noise about this student and our university's decision got so loud that finally the President just said, "let the kid go if he signs a waver" even though wavers don't fully protect a university from liability in these cases. And so the student went taking Drew financial aid to Israel with him and with full transfer credits from the Israeli university coming back to Drew when he returned home. The Eritrean professors were shocked by this development and came to me to request reconsideration of our decision regarding their program. Of course, their program appeal was denied (they didn't have any rich, powerful donors or insistent rabbis advocating for them) and to my knowledge a program in Eritrea has never been offered again at Drew.
At the time, I was really struck by the sense of entitlement, victimhood, and persecution that everyone lobbying on behalf of the student expressed and by the fact that even the smallest little issue, like the denial of study abroad privileges, was considered an affront to everyone who felt a tie to Israel. No one was willing to listen to our point of view or to compromise one single inch. This weird experience from my past seems relevant today in that this attitude we experienced at Drew, just continues to carry over to any and all issues related to Israel. They and their lobbyists and protectors related to the current conflict, seem to be as unwilling to yield from their positions or even consider the perspective of anyone else, just as was the case in Madison, New Jersey in 2007.
BTW, the student never did thank me personally for any of the assistance our office gave him once the decision was made that he could study in Israel and, after he returned to the States and I ran into him one day by accident while walking across campus, he didn't express any joy or enthusiasm about his international experience."It was ok" is what I remember him saying about his precious Israeli semester that had created a worldwide controversy because he couldn't get exactly what he demanded.
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