College Leaders Balance Israel and Speech

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Interesting in several ways ...

As the debate about Israel rages on college campuses across America, there is one figure for whom the conversation takes on strikingly personal dimensions: the Jewish college president.

About 20 Jewish men and women hold the highest positions at universities across the country, including campuses that have become hotbeds of political activism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For these individuals, the role of president entails a constant balancing act between encouraging free speech on campus and honoring their personal, often supportive, views of Israel.

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But going public on Israel had its limits. Several presidents voiced exasperation with the Jewish community’s scrutiny of campus events, preferring to mediate the Israel-Palestine debate internally. Still others described their efforts to extinguish sparks before they flared into small fires, by coaching Jewish and Muslim students in civil dialogue.

Yudof, who has run the 10-college U.C. system since 2008, is one president for whom the topic of BDS merited not only public condemnation, but also action. A self-described “strong defender of Israel” who oversees some of the most combustive campuses in America, Yudof has been alternately portrayed as a First Amendment wonk out of step with Jewish interests and an unblinking Zionist beholden to them.

http://forward.com/articles/149684/