Academy Hosts Israel/Palestine 101 Workshop

By LUKE DAVIS, CELIA VALDEZ, and TRUMAN  YEE 

On Sunday, March 24, in light of deepening on-campus discourse around the conflict in Israel-Palestine, the Academy hosted an informational event titled “Israel/Palestine 101.” This talk, given by guest lecturer Frank Tipton in the Assembly Hall, was announced in an email from the Dean of Students as an “interactive presentation…designed to educate beginning learners about the modern complexity of this land.” Those required to attend were student leaders including dorm proctors, club coheads, and team captains, but the event was open to all community members. 

Following Tipton’s presentation, members of Exeter’s Muslim Students Association (MSA), Exeter Jewish Community (EJC), and Middle Eastern and North African Society (MENAS), and several other students gathered at Principal Bill Rawson’s house for a dinner with Tipton.

Speaking to the planning process behind the presentation, Rawson said, “A number of students representing different affinity groups had expressed interest in educational programming. A group of faculty and administrators met several times to discuss various kinds of programming with outside speakers that might be available…[We] were aware that Mr. Tipton had spoken at some peer schools and that his talks had been received well at those schools. We decided as a group to proceed with Mr. Tipton while holding open the possibility of a panel approach later in the term.”

Community members had various sentiments going into the event. Reflecting on the moments before Tipton’s talk, Rabbi Marx-Asch emphasized her emotions. “To be frank, I was nervous, and I had a bit of a stomach ache the whole time. This whole situation just gives me a stomach ache, which I think speaks to the emotional intensity of it.” Marx-Asch added, “It’s been a long six months since October that we’ve been trying to work our way through this, so I think a lot of us are just exhausted at this point.” 

“I was very happy when the event was announced,” remarked Upper Mathew Grossman. “Some members of MSA and EJC spoke with Frank Tipton prior to his talk, so I was very excited going into it. I was willing to learn and have an open mindset, and I wanted to hear what he had to say.”

A senior and MSA member who asked to remain anonymous recounted, “I tried to maintain an open mind. I was just very curious as to what was going to be said…I was also curious on how the community would respond because of how quiet I’ve seen campus be about [the conflict]. There’s no wide conversation about it.”

Senior Cordel Epale commented on his expectations for the event: “I wasn’t expecting too much from it. I pictured it being kind of one-sided, where the speaker would be pointing fingers and saying ‘This is what happened. This is the bad guy because of X, Y, and Z.’”

Though its hour-long runtime proved to be a limitation of the presentation, community members recognized Tipton’s attempt to communicate historical fact in an impartial manner. 

Rawson personally felt that Tipton’s presentation was accurate to its description as a basic presentation to those new to the subject of history in the Middle East, though he echoed others’ opinions on its content. “His standard practice, which he followed here, includes talking to students in advance so that he might adjust his presentation based on that student input,” explained Rawson. “I don’t know to what extent he was able to do that here, given that we had just returned from spring break and those conversations happened only a day or two before his talk.  Having done a fair amount of reading myself in recent months, there were times when I would have appreciated greater depth and complexity in his talk.”

“I’d describe it as rudimentary,” said an anonymous senior. “It covered the fundamentals [necessary] for somebody to start engaging in this conversation. For [a presentation that] was given an hour, I think it was pretty good.”

“I feel like it was very methodical in establishing where tensions originally started and how they progressed over time,” Epale added.

“I appreciated that he included different narratives,” Marx-Asch noted. “He anchored it in historical moments, and then [discussed] the events that happened [and how they] were interpreted differently by different populations and different interest groups. I thought that it was helpful to hear other people’s perspectives as part of the presentation.”

Grossman similarly reflected on Tipton’s coverage of multiple perspectives: “He offered two perspectives: one was the Israeli perspective, and the other was a Palestinian one. He tried to remain as impartial as possible, and I think he did that pretty well.” Later, he added that “As a Jewish student, I’m most used to hearing an Israeli-Jewish perspective from friends and Jewish people I know…it was very interesting to hear somebody trying to portray a Palestinian perspective,”

In contrast, senior Catherine Zehner remarked on Tipton’s overgeneralization of each group’s point of view.“I didn’t like how he would say, ‘This is the Palestinian perspective, and this is the Israeli-Jewish perspective,’ when really there’s a lot of overlap. Not all Jewish people or not all Israeli-Jewish people hold that perspective.”

Additionally, Zehner commented on the shortcomings of the presentation. “I think there was an effort to be neutral, or as he called it, ‘pro-solution,’ but there was a complete lack of acknowledgement of really obvious disparities. Mr. Tipton went to great lengths to show statistics, but there are very obvious disparities in the statistics that he refused to name. I think his intention was to not take a side, but he was really dismissive. There were moments when he named the exact conditions that define an apartheid, and in an attempt to not take a stance, he just didn’t say the word ‘apartheid.’ He gave us all that information just to not [explicitly] name it…I think it was an easy out.”

Senior Cee McClave reflected on Tipton’s apparent lack of personal bias in the presentation. “It was clear that even if Tipton himself had personal opinions about the conflict, which I’m sure he did because he’s a human being, he definitely tried to keep that out of it. As a human person, it’s going to be really hard to keep personal bias out of how you’re reporting on an issue, even for a scholar. While I definitely did appreciate him listing out, ‘Here’s the assumptions that we’re making,’ it would have been nice to try and acknowledge the fact that he does have personal biases.”

Epale praised the way Tipton presented information. “I think the speaker was very educated. He seemed to know what he was doing. I appreciated the way information was given, with the use of specific images. For example, they were showing actual maps of how land was divided. I think it was put together very well in a way that helped get the information across efficiently.”

McClave offered a different perspective on Tipton’s language. “I think there was an excessive use of the passive voice in describing the historical context. Instead of saying specifically what groups of people did, Tipton used phrasing like ‘XYZ happened to this group.’ The phrasing takes away the perpetrator in that situation.”

Similarly, Zehner voiced critique of the way in which information was presented. “I understand that [the administration] can’t take a stance, but that doesn’t mean they should be bringing in speakers who will, by design, ignore such obvious data. It’s not even an opinion. It’s a disparity in displaced people and deaths and rights, legal actions, and government and international support. Another thing that the presentation didn’t touch on, or barely at all, is the continued U.S. support of Israel throughout its history.”

The anonymous senior described what they would’ve liked out of the presentation. “I think he needed to...be given more time to talk about each side and elaborate in more detail the history of conflict in the region,” they said. “He did a good job talking about the 2000 Camp David Summit, how there was almost a peace deal reached, and how that didn’t happen…And he went on into detail about what each side thought, how they responded. That was good, but I think he needed to do that, or be given more time to do that, for the other events and conflicts.”

After the event, Rawson invited members of the community to his house for a dinner to facilitate a continued discussion of the event.  “It was an opportunity for various student group leaders who had been meeting and talking beforehand with Mr. Tipton to help shape the talk. This was like the processing afterwards or a debrief afterwards, as well as [a way to] start talking about next steps,” Marx-Asch remarked. 

Grossman mentioned the various backgrounds of people in attendance at the dinner. “It was an assortment of students. There were a lot of members of the Jewish community, a lot of members of the Muslim community, and some people that weren’t aligned and didn’t really know what to think.”

McClave pointed out the way in which attendees arranged themselves. “The dinner table, and maybe this was unintentional, ended up kind of segregating ourselves so that everyone from EJC (Exeter Jewish Community) was on one half of the table, and then me and everyone from MSA (Muslim Students Association) and MENAS (Middle Eastern and North African Society) were on the other side. I think that ideological divide was a good illustration that there are still tensions.”

Still, Marx-Asch commented on the importance of having a dedicated space for respectful discourse. “This was really the first deliberate sitting, [the first] ‘let’s sit down and talk to each other’ forum. And I think many of them agree [that] taking it out of social media and anonymous posts and really sitting down and talking to each other, it’s hard and important.”

Grossman commented on the nature of that evening’s discourse. “The dinner kind of spiraled into an argument about the cancellation of the MLK Workshop on Palestinian-Black Solidarity, which was, in my opinion, kind of unfortunate, because we had an expert there, and he was willing to talk. But that’s what [discourse] can look like with mediators and facilitators that are adults.”

Similarly, McClave noted that some found the dinner’s atmosphere to be tense. “It was good that we had the dinner, and it was generally productive. However, there was also some level of tension. I know from talking to other people at the dinner that different people, depending on what groups they were representing, had very different feelings about how the dinner went and how comfortable they felt.” 

Across the board, the community showed interest in continuing Exeter’s discussion on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the future.

Marx-Asch saw the presentation as a first step. “I’m hoping this was just a start and I’m hoping that we can, as I said before, bring in more points of view and different layers and more nuanced explorations of this particular topic as well as bringing in the modeling and teaching and opportunities for students to learn how to do these hard conversations for any topic that will surely help and show up in the future.”

McClave brought up the idea of an expert panel. “The possibility of a panel discussion between experts definitely interests me. I think it could alleviate some of the shortcomings with Tipton’s style of presentation. Now that we have this rough historical background, having multiple people discuss and come in with different perspectives would be useful. That way it’s not just one person trying to represent the opinions of multiple people.”

On discussion between students, McClave added, “More space for student discussion isn’t a bad idea, although I think a lot of people would probably appreciate some kind of faculty moderation if that were the case. In terms of bias, it’s certainly a valid concern. However, I think if you structure it right, putting student voices at the center, that ends up not mattering as much.”

Similarly, the anonymous senior called for more spaces for conversation. “For one, just hold more spaces for this conversation to happen. I don’t think a simple information session is going to solve anything. You need conversation.” 

The anonymous senior also considered the difficulties associated with said conversation. “I think it’s one of the topics that people are afraid to bring up. I know the school invited all the student leadership training or student leadership people, the captains, student listeners, proctors, but I’d bet most people probably wouldn’t be having this conversation or put too much thought into the conflict if they were required to.”

Epale expressed interest in a school-wide assembly dedicated to the topic. “I think a school-wide assembly would actually be a very good idea…It would not only show that the school is doing something to move forward, it would also be an active step in letting the rest of the school know information that may be new to them.”

Rawson, on behalf of the administration, elaborated on the Academy’s next step towards facilitating further education and discussion on Israel/Palestine. “We are continuing to explore options for a panel presentation before the end of this term.  We hope to involve students in the design and content of any such panel and in designing opportunities for continued discussion supported by adults after any such presentation,” Rawson shared. In continuation, he expressed the purpose of such a panel: “In addition to probing the history of conflict in greater depth and complexity, we hope a panel will help model how we as a community can talk to each other about such difficult and deeply personal issues, acknowledging differences in backgrounds, perspectives and experiences, with the mutual respect that we try to bring to other difficult conversations.”