Dialogues Across Differences: Susannah Heschel and Ezzedine Fishere host panel on dialogue engagement surrounding the conflict and war in the Middle East
At Dartmouth College, Heschel serves as a professor and chair of the Jewish Studies Program, while Fishere is a senior lecturer on Middle East politics.
On May 9, Susannah Heschel, the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor and chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College, and Ezzedine Fishere, a senior lecturer on Middle East politics at the same university, held the final panel of MIT’s Dialogues Across Differences: Building Community, a speaker series hosted at the Schwartzman College of Computing. Heschel studies the evolution of Jewish and Protestant religious ideas in Germany throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The pair’s panel was titled “A Model for Discussing Conflict and War in the Middle East.” The panel consisted of Heschel and Fishere’s talk followed by a question and answer session with the audience moderated by Karl Reid, the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at MIT. President Sally Kornbluth also attended the panel, introduced the speakers and moderators, and facilitated the talk.
Fishere began the talk with a metaphor from the Bible to emphasize different perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war, an ongoing armed conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas within the broader Israel-Palestine conflict. He said that there are often multiple narratives to a single event, all of which are legitimate in each person’s eyes. He added that everyone has the option to either choose one view and stand by it or consider, or at least acknowledge others’ perspectives.
Fishere continued to speak about his views on college activism. He expressed that his aim as a university professor was to guide students to develop their own perspectives on different ideas. He continued to say that the primary purpose of universities is for learning and not activism, conveying that universities should allow students to advocate but also ensure that students do not overextend that privilege.
Fishere passed the rest of the panel discussion to Heschel, who spoke about the importance of universities being receptive to students’ perspectives. She emphasized that universities should encourage students to engage in dialogue and help them make up their minds, because there is no other place to have these kinds of conversations where students could think together and be challenged by each other to change their minds.
Heschel and Fishere’s panel marked the end of the “Dialogues Across Differences: Building Community” speaker series.