Houston Hillel and supporters are bringing Mitchell Bard, Ph.D., to town on Dec. 1, when he will meet with local college students, university officials and community donors to discuss Israel education.
The renowned U.S.-Middle East policy expert also will deliver a presentation – free and open to the community – on Israel education and Israel advocacy. Co-sponsored by Hillel and the Anti-Defamation League, the event will take place at the Houston Hillel Student Center, 1700 Bissonnet St., at 7:30 p.m.
Dr. Bard is executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. His Washington-based organization helps
bring leading Israeli scholars to American universities to teach about Israeli history, politics, culture and society. Over the past half-decade, through its visiting scholar program, AICE has brought 62 Israeli professors to 39 American universities, including, for the past two years, Houston’s Rice University.
Bard also is director of the Jewish Virtual Library, a comprehensive online Judaic encyclopedia. He is a past editor of the Near East Report, AIPAC’s newsletter on U.S. Middle East policy, and author/editor of 20 authoritative books, including “Myths & Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict.”
Houston Hillel has arranged a full schedule for Bard, dividing his time between Rice and the University of Houston. Hillel executive director Rabbi Kenny Weiss explained why he organized Bard’s visit.
“Houston Hillel provides students with a wide variety of viewpoints on many subjects related to Judaism, Jewish life and Israel. We trust that our students will come to mature conclusions and make responsible decisions if they are able to access information from many, often disparate sources,” he said.
“With that goal in mind, Dr. Bard’s visit to Houston’s college campuses helps us provide our students with the tools to speak knowledgeably about Israel, the prospect for peace in the Middle East, and how to engage in Israel advocacy on campus. Dr. Bard’s visit is just one facet of a comprehensive list of programs and speakers that Houston Hillel sponsors on Houston’s college campuses,” Rabbi Weiss added.
Bard, in a phone interview with the JH-V, addressed the need to have balanced Israel education on American college campuses, including in Houston.
“We’re interested in expanding the field of academic study of Israel in the U.S.,” the AICE director said. “We would like for Israel to be studied like other countries, such as China, Russia or France.
“We want Israel to be seen as a normal country, not through the prism of conflict. Our objective is to help students have a complete understanding of Israel – looking at politics, history, culture, arts, etc.”
To present “Israel beyond the conflict,” AICE’s visiting scholar program selects Israeli professors in a wide array of fields. Alec Mishory, Ph.D., for example, who is at Rice for the 2009-2010 school year, is a professor of art history. Dr. Mishory is teaching a course under Rice’s new Jewish Studies minor.
AICE, Bard explained, is filling an important niche. “A recent survey found that 53 percent of American universities offered zero courses on Israel; 70 percent offered zero to one. So, students who wanted to study Israel, couldn’t take courses on most campuses, and those that did exist weren’t very good, in many instances,” he pointed out.
Bard stressed a clear distinction between education and advocacy. “There is no place for advocacy in the classroom,” he insisted. “Teachers should present on Israel in a scholarly and balanced way.” Problematic, however, is that some teachers who are critics of Israel inject their own politics and agenda in their classrooms. Universities must apply the same standards to their Middle East studies departments as they do to others, Bard said.
Outside the classroom is different. “Students and organizations have the right to advocate their views,” he noted. Thus, Bard’s Jewish Virtual Library works to provide students with tools, resources and skills to become effective advocates for Israel on campus.
According to Bard, one of the great challenges of Israel advocacy on the college campus is that most students are ill-prepared, or are caught off guard by preexisting anti-Israel advocacy, when they arrive. “There’s been a lot of focus on college students but, by the time they get to college, it’s almost too late. If students get to college and are faced with challenges, and they didn’t learn the answers in high school, you can’t expect them to respond.”
In his response to this problem, Bard and his organization have developed a new textbook curriculum for high school students. The materials will be available in a few months.
Additional challenges to bringing balanced Israel education to college campuses include lack of funding; lack of interest; lack of commitment from a university or community; and anti-Israel bias in Middle East studies departments, Bard pointed out. Yet, he noted that once AICE has helped make funding available, universities have been very receptive.
“We’ve sent scholars to universities like Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley – and now Rice. These are top universities, so they don’t just do it for the money,” Bard remarked. “Twenty-five percent of our visiting scholars are asked to stay for a second year. And, many of them are teaching popular courses. Michael Oren at Yale, for example, had the most students on campus.”
AICE has 24 Israeli professors in the United States this current academic year. “The goal is to plant seeds, and show how valuable it is for universities to have – and fund for themselves – Israel education on their campuses,” Bard said. AICE has a strong success rate with such efforts. University of California-Los Angeles, University of
Maryland and San Francisco State University are just three schools that have created permanent chairmanships, programs or centers – to great effect – after having participated in AICE’s visiting scholar initiative.
Bard said he would like to see the same thing happen in Houston, where local donors would work with local campuses to create permanent chairs or centers. Early steps already have been taken, with Joan and Stanford Alexander endowing a visiting Israeli scholar professorship at Rice.
At his upcoming 7:30 p.m. event in Houston, Bard will explore the boundaries of Israel advocacy. The interactive session will discuss various methods to make the case for Israel, and offer effective ways to communicate Israel’s positions and formulate responses.
To RSVP for Mitchell Bard’s Houston presentation, call Hillel at 713-526-4918, or email hillel@houstonhillel.org.
