Sunday, March 22, 2009
If I didn't know better, I'd think SC 367 Social Justice in Israel/Palestine was something on offer for the slow kids at Evergreen State College, not our own eminent Boston College:
This seminar provides the intellectual underpinnings for an immersion trip to Israel/Palestine in January. Students in this course must commit to the trip and, upon their return, to a project that uses the knowledge they gained in Israel/Palestine. The seminar will include a review of the Israeli and Palestinian history, an analysis of the contested theological claims to the land, and an examination of conflict resolving strategies focusing on cross-border groups operating in Israel/Palestine (e.g. Prime, Combatants for Peace, Parents Circle). Finally, we will consider possible economic futures for the area under both one and two state scenarios. Eve Spangler
A January article from BC Heights describes the offering: Class offers students opportunity to travel to Gaza
Despite the recent conflict in Gaza and heightened tension in the region, a group of Boston College students spent part of their winter break in the West Bank and Israel. As part of a course titled "Social Justice in Israel and Palestine," Eve Spangler, professor in the sociology department, and 13 students spent 10 days speaking with both Israelis and Palestinians and contextualizing the issues that they had studied.
The course, which was introduced in the fall, addresses the issues of human rights, economic development, and historical and religious discourse in Israel and Palestine, and concludes with a trip to the two lands followed by a final project. Spangler said that the idea for the course grew out of her own desire to learn more about justice in the Middle East, which she became more involved with four years ago through the group Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.
FFIPP's site contains a commendation for Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine for supposedly convincing the school to divest (this turned out to be a lie), among the usual calls for ending the 'occupation,' etc...you get the picture.
"Well here I thought, I'm reading and reading and I don't have anyone to talk to, and I thought 'where is this going?' So I decided to have a course," Spangler said.
Your tuition dollars are now paying for an aging lefty's therapy sessions, conducted courtesy of your children.
The inclusion of the trip in curriculum was supported by Alexandra Saieh, A&S '09, who contacted the sociology department two summers ago to suggest such a trip. Saieh said she then met with Spangler, and the two worked with the co-founder of Birthright Unplugged, Dunya Alwan, who brings people of Jewish decent to Palestinian refugee camps.
This paragraph gives probably the best exposure of the course's true purpose. Birthright Unplugged is a highly political group with a well-known anti-Israel purpose bent on turning Jewish kids against their heritage.
Saieh is the contact for the Israel-Apartheid activities happening at BC this week, and which include a virtual rogues gallery of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish 'academics' like Sara Roy, Duncan Kennedy, Ilan Pappe, Ghada Karmi, and Leila Farsakh. The week's activities also include a 'report back' from this very class on Wednesday, which shows the organizers expect the participants will be coming across with the narrative expected of them.
After spending the semester learning about the situation in Israel and Palestine and fundraising for their trip, the students spent four days in the West Bank and four days in Israel where they visited refugee camps, Bedouin villages, and universities, and spoke with Israeli dissidents...
Dissidents? Israel is a free society, it doesn't have dissidents. It's amazing how historical illiteracy has watered down the language. It's not just a matter of semantics. The meaning behind the words matter.
...Chris Miller, A&S '09, said the trip in particular changed his outlook on the issue. "It was a complete paradigm shift. You grow up and it's almost self-evident that you're pro-Israel, but going there you see the other side," Miller said. "It was incredibly powerful. You spend the entire semester preparing for the trip but it doesn't even do justice to what you see. It was very tough to see a lot of things we learned about firsthand, a lot of the injustices and basically the modern day apartheid."...
Yup, they're getting the message expected of them, and ready to deliver it.
There's also an article today in the BC Chronicle: Many Questions, No Easy Answers
Just another day at our indoctrination universities, where political indoctrination passes for scholarship and your tuition dollars go to appease the personal demons of overgrown adolescents like Eve Spangler.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Boston College: Course Credit for Anti-Israel Activism.
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God forbid students learn about the Israel/Palestine conflict outside of your frame of reference.
This is "learning"?
Or indoctrination?
Just another way to show how the Falsetinian ProPALganda machine works.
Good post !