According to the World Health Organization, global warming will cause the deaths of 250,000 people each year from 2030-2050, mainly from malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria and heat stress.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 48,830 American deaths by firearms in 2021 — a number which shows no sign of diminishing.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 582,462 people experienced homelessness in the United States alone in 2022.
According to RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) there are 433,000 cases of sexual assault or rape among people ages 12 and older in the United States each year.
Climate. Guns. Homelessness. Sexual Assault and Rape. You’d think each of these causes merits their own campus protests, no?
No. America’s elite students studying in elite universities taught by elite faculty are not currently “living in tents” and other encampments on the campus quad for any of these crises that effect Americans of every background each and every day. They’re either not sexy enough; too big to tackle, or, as we have seen in some of the worst protests since the Hamas-Israel war began, don’t involve demonizing Jews for crime of being Jewish.
Don’t get me wrong. The war in Gaza is a disaster. It’s not that the humanitarian crisis in Israel and Palestine isn’t urgent; of course it is. The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel has unleashed a war and crisis for Israelis and Palestinians not just in Israel but across the globe, the likes of which this hundred year old conflict has never seen.
Bad actors on all sides of the conflict want to see it fester and grow. And good actors on all sides are trying to contain, deescalate, and solve it, with clear thinking, civil discourse and ongoing dialogue. Every college and university is a microcosm of the educational and community values it insists on instilling in its students. Some get it right; others get it wrong.
As Andrew Pessin, a professor of philosophy at Connecticut College points out, one major problem lies in the notion of university educational environments being undermined by “an entire narrative that is profoundly one-sided, oversimplified, ignorant of history, often counter to the facts, mistaken about who are the good guys and who are the bad, and driven, ultimately, by hatred and bigotry—and which licenses the profoundly outrageously immoral violence of October 7.”
There is very little teaching going on in these kinds of settings; and the fomenting of hatred and violence, of excusing rape, dismemberment and murder of innocent Jews as “resistance” has become an insidious rot inside some campus quads.
But in a few weeks time the campus quad will empty out for summer, a new season will unfold and maybe even the war will stop, hostages that remain alive will return home and the rebuilding and healing and peacemaking will begin.
Of course, Hamas will remain a genocidal organization by charter; the Netanyahu government will remain mired in corruption and dysfunction and no real day-after plan; and the suffering will endure for remaining hostages, for Israelis traumatized and maimed on October 7, and for millions of innocent Palestinians who have the grave misfortune of living under Hamas and a brutal Israeli occupation and bombardment.
Coexistence and education will remain at the core of the real revolution. Yelling and screaming words like colonization and genocide will necessarily give way to long, hard work of peace, or at least “not war.” It’s what Standing Together is trying to do. It’s what the Hand in Hand Schools are trying to do. It’s actually what most people try to do every day, every week, every month, just to get by in this world.
“Simon the Just was of the remnants of the Great Assembly. He used to say, ‘On three things the world stands — on Learning, on Worship and on Deeds of Lovingkindness.’”
Learning, in the Jewish tradition, requires conflict, argument, debate and hard work. It means seeing an issue from many different sides, each its own reflection of God’s greater design for the universe. Like a jewel refracting light, the message is perceived differently depending upon where you stand.
Worship, or Avodah in Hebrew, means service, sacrifice, giving up what is precious to our own selves in order to contribute to a greater good. Avodah also means prayer. It is aspirational, transcendent, and recognizes that we humans are not really divided by our color or beliefs or gender identity but rather are radically united in our humanness and humility before God.
Lovingkindness is, quite simply, the foundation of the world. We make new life with acts of love; we save lives with acts of love; we shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, free the captive, and even bury the dead with acts of lovingkindness.
These are certainties and truths that undoubtedly will outlast what passes for education in certain corners of the campus quad. When the prophet Amos said, “Let justice run down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream” he was right. But we can also pray that the waters of righteousness carry a molecular structure with helixes of humility, learning, service and love.