The period following the UN Declaration of partition was indeed a time of great upheaval in the Middle East. The UN declared a Jewish State in one portion of the British Mandate, and an Arab State in the other. The Jews accepted partition, and five armies attacked the nascent Jewish State. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled the Jewish side of partition, but many stayed. Equal numbers of Jews fled Arab lands, crowding into refugee camps in the tiny Jewish state.
As the Queer Resource Center’s Community Outreach Coordinator, part of my job is getting straight people to care. The more time I spend working on bringing allies into our space, however, the more I realize that a significant gap in ally-directed education has developed in our community. Put simply, our allies are learning how to respectfully participate in intergroup dialogue about queer people in a low-stakes academic context, but they aren’t developing pragmatic ally skills meant for the real world, where the stakes are so much higher.
Last Saturday, Amherst Hillel and Amherst Students for Israel cohosted “Lila Levin: A Blue and White Night” in the Powerhouse in honor of Israel’s 67th birthday. Continuing a string of many seemingly benign cultural activities, this event was not neutral, but was instead a wounded space, one created by the blood, tears and bodies of Palestinians. Israel’s Independence Day is not a celebratory occasion in honor of which we should throw parties and socialize.
Amherst Hillel serves a number of roles on campus, roles as diverse as our own student body. We aim to enrich the lives of Jewish students and bolster meaningful, lasting connections with Jewish life and Israel. We work to foster a strong Jewish community on campus, one that welcomes Jews and non-Jews alike. We seek to educate and include the greater Amherst community in our celebrations of Jewish culture, Jewish faith and Jewish life.
Friendship, for most of my life, has been a word packed with conflicting emotions and unwelcome baggage. In second grade, as a quiet, slightly chubby and bookish kid, I didn’t have many friends. But things got much worse when I moved to the city and began elementary school all over again. Making friends admittedly takes time, but months passed and I hadn’t a single friend. I was designated the “uncool” kid of my new second grade class.
Think of any college movie you’ve ever seen. Buying into the classic collegiate stereotypes, the protagonists probably get drunk at a big football game, cheer for their mascot at the track meet or attend an underground a capella battle. Before stepping on campus, most future Amherst students probably imagined they would frequently support their classmates, neighbors and close friends at events, performances or sports games. They most likely imagined they’d spend their weekends wrapping themselves in purple apparel and screaming “Go Amherst!” until their voices turned hoarse.
In March, members of the Green Amherst Project met with members of the investment committee on the board of trustees to discuss their recent statement on sustainability. In their statement, the board articulated lofty goals that included plans to push Amherst towards “carbon neutrality,” the proposal of a green “revolving fund” and a commitment to “environmental best practices” in their investing policy. Paired with these three goals was a dismissal, though not a direct rejection, of the Green Amherst Project’s call for coal divestment.
