Freiderik Meire Gardens and Sculpture Park Grand Rapids, Michigan

It can’t be easy to be a college president these days. Balancing the needs of students for an education and for free expression in the midst of world events, is not territory for the feeble hearted.  Protests on college campuses today bring back memories of the Viet Nam era when colleges were embroiled in anti-war protests.

How does one navigate when both Jewish students and Muslim students feel the onslaught of hate directed toward them. There has been an appalling rise of both antisemitism and Islamophobia across the country since the Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s response to that attack in both Gaza and the West Bank.

The easiest answer would be for everyone to lay down their arms. But given the human condition, that is unlikely to happen. Years of oppression and years of fear are dominating forces in today’s war.

Which is why I appreciated former President Barack Obama’s comments about the complexity of the situation in Israel and Palestine. Speaking at an interview  on the podcast,   *“Pod Save America” he said, “If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And . . .  that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable . . . If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth, and you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean – that all of us are complicit to some degree.”

Obama encouraged people to talk to each other. “Including people who you disagree with. If you genuinely want to change this . . . you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it.”   Which may be exactly where college presidents and schools across the country need to start.  

Deep in our own convictions it is difficult to understand the other side.   Our eyes are shut to another’s reality.   It takes intentionality to pause in our assumptions long enough to listen . . .  To hear  stories of  fear, pain and personal history.   Listening is the starting place in working together for a just and lasting peace.

“Turn your ear toward wisdom,
and stretch your mind toward understanding.” Proverbs 2:2

*November 4, 2023