This commentary is by Felicia Kornbluh, professor of history and of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the University of Vermont; and Matt Vogel, executive director of UVM Hillel.
An old Jewish saying has it that where there are two Jews, you get three opinions. When it comes to Israel and Gaza, the number of opinions in Jewish communities, and even in the minds of individual members of those communities, might be a lot higher. Every Jewish person feels something about the current war in the region.
In Vermont, Jewish communities around the state have a wide range of views about Israelis, Palestinians and campus protest encampments. Jewish students and faculty at the University of Vermont mirror these nuanced and complicated conversations across our state. Any attempt to simplify these views falls short and does a disservice to the seriousness with which so many people are engaging these hard issues.
This spring, the University of Vermont, like many other U.S. universities, saw a protest encampment making a range of demands related to the war in Gaza and the relationship between the state of Israel and Palestinians.
Unlike their counterparts at many of these other institutions, UVM’s students and administrations found their way to resolution, with enough “give” on each side to allow for each to claim success, and for graduation to proceed more-or-less as usual (albeit, without the original invited speaker, the Biden administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield).
This peaceful compromise reflected the range of views present in our state — including among Jewish students and faculty at UVM. Some were fully supportive of the encampment and its demands, while others wanted the UVM administration to do more to enforce its rules and local laws against trespassing — and many, these authors included, wanted to use the on-campus crisis as a “teachable moment,” an opportunity to learn more about the war in Gaza, the history and politics of the Middle East, and about how to live in a mutually respectful community.
The encampment at UVM was relatively small although loud and disruptive, sitting between the library and student center, with a robust sound system. Its slogans included “from the river to the sea,” which many interpret as a call to eliminate the state of Israel.
Another slogan, “Intifada UVM,” seemed insensitive to some Jewish listeners, who thought it implied a lack of concern about the fear some felt when the heard the word, “intifada,” recalling events in Israel in the late 1980s-90s’ and early 2000s, including rocket and bomb attacks on civilian targets that produced injury and death.
Jewishly identified students at UVM are thoughtful about the global and local situations of the past several months. Whether supportive of the encampment, actively opposed to it or in between, virtually all of them have thought and felt deeply about Israel, the Palestinians, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and the myriad moral and political questions these issues pose.
Many are in a lot of pain — the pain of dissension from the views of their friends and roommates, sometimes even their romantic partners, parents, siblings and professors. From a wide variety of perspectives, they are disillusioned and disappointed.
Since Oct. 7, nearly every student, regardless of their perspective, has experienced isolation from at least part of their community.
For some, the disappointment is pointed toward a university administration that cannot seem to control forceful protest or enforce its own policies consistently. Others train their disappointment and pressure on administrators to disentangle UVM from Israel, the democratic Jewish nationalist or Zionist state that they find inherently objectionable. Or at least from the recent actions of that state vis-a-vis civilian populations in the Gaza Strip.
Faculty who identify as Jewish and those who do research on the Middle East, antisemitism, Islamophobia and related subjects had an equally wide range of views. Some were eager for a more forceful response by the UVM administration — if only to discourage the protesters to raise the ante to greater amounts of escalation.
Many hungered for other options, ways to educate and negotiate our way out of this campus conflict, and to register criticism of the way Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza without vilifying Jews as a group, or Israel as a country with a right to exist.
Two Jews, three opinions. Scores of Jews, scores of opinions. Please, at the very least, let’s not flatten or simplify the story of this moment in UVM’s history and the history of the diverse and flourishing Jewish communities in Vermont.
Our students and colleagues, and our friends off-campus, have since Oct. 7 experienced a series of unprecedented traumatic events. Many of us are awash in memory, grief, vulnerability and anger, searching in the face of overwhelming emotion for familiar intellectual frames to place around new facts.
Our plea to the UVM and Vermont communities alike: Can we tread lightly in this painful and confusing time? Turn down the temperature, when we have the chance to, instead of raising it? Believe in the promise of civil debate, including in nonviolent protest and respectful discourse?
Despite some of the recent rhetoric on campus, we continue to hold out hope that students, faculty and university leaders can turn the painful and confusing events of the past year into more opportunities to do what we do best at a university — learning from each other and the world around us.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Felicia Kornbluh and Matt Vogel: Jewish communities at UVM — and in Vermont — are diverse.