UVM Community Gathers for “Our Common Ground: Israel and Palestine” Symposium

erhaps no topic has emerged front and center on college and university campuses in the past year as has the challenging issue of Israel and Palestine, and the escalating conflict in the Middle East. It has driven intense conversations and demonstrations across the nation and, indeed, the world, and concerns have only intensified with the recent escalation of fighting. Against this background, members of the UVM community gathered on September 25 for a special symposium, "Our Common Ground: Israel and Palestine," an effort to engage in thoughtful dialogue to cultivate self-reflection, critical thinking, and cross-cultural understanding.

Convening the symposium in UVM's Ira Allen Chapel, Provost Patricia Prelock (soon to assume the interim presidency of the university) thanked UVM students she met with earlier this year for suggesting the need for this kind of gathering. "They talked to me about bringing us together for several events like this where we can expand our knowledge and educate ourselves about difficult issues," said Prelock. "In this discussion students shared openly and respectfully. They offered their varying perspectives, and they listened to those of others. In doing so, they modeled what we want to see happen today."

Amer F. Ahmed, UVM's vice president for inclusive excellence, spoke next, first welcoming the participants and then giving a history of the rise of the nation-state as a socio-political entity, contrasting it with aspects of his own life story as someone who experienced the close cooperation and mutual respect between Muslim and Jewish communities in his Ohio hometown. "People point to Israel/Palestine and frame it as a Muslim-Jewish conflict," he said. "Actually, that framing is not helpful in understanding the role of a nation state in relationship to the people of the region, who may be of various faith traditions."

The symposium's keynote address was delivered by Simran Jeet Singh, assistant professor of interreligious histories at Union Theological Seminary, former executive director for the Aspen Institute's Religion & Society Program and author of The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life.

"What I want to offer you all today is actually not history or politics or religion," Singh said. "To me, it's the animating question of our time. Which is: how do we learn to live alongside one another again? How do we learn to be in relationship with one another? And in some ways, you can see it as avoiding the question of what's your opinion on this issue. And in other ways, it feels to me more fundamental in Step One of getting to a place where we can talk about the hard stuff."

Singh then explained his thoughts about fostering the combination of "curiosity, courage, and connection" to change the way participants in difficult discussions interact with one another. "And it can also change our experience of one another," he said. "That's what I want to offer you all in terms of thinking about or laying the groundwork for your conversations today, around something that is one of the most contentious, painful, difficult conversations of our time."

Panel discussion members (left to right) Thomas Borchert, Foroogh Farhang, Peter Henne, and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst.

The keynote was followed by several breakout sessions in the Waterman Building. Later in the afternoon, back at Ira Allen Chapel, a UVM faculty panel discussion titled "The State of Things" explored the role played by states as institutional and political forms in relation to the current conflict in the Middle East. Participating in the panel were Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, associate professor of religion, Peter Henne, associate professor of political science, Foroogh Farhang, assistant professor of anthropology, and Thomas Borchert, professor of religion.

The symposium concluded with a round of breakout discussions-frank but respectful talk sparked by the issues raised in the panel discussion, and an example of a key aspect of the day's event that keynote speaker Singh had noted earlier in his remarks. "I hope you realize how special it is to have this conversation today," Singh said. "You should appreciate yourselves and one another for showing up, because it's not happening much today."

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