Until a couple of years ago, college campuses around Illinois had little of what could be considered an impartial and comprehensive treatment of Israel in an academic context.
Many universities had courses on various aspects of the Arab world while simultaneously offering hardly any opportunity to learn about modern Israel. Students sympathetic to Israel reported that most reading lists and discussions were undeniably one-sided, and almost every discussion on the subject seemed to focus only on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Now, however, multiple schools around the state have introduced innovative Israel studies programs, and more are in line to begin participating, thanks to support from the Israel Studies Project introduced by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.
“The list of scholars who have come is phenomenal,” said Gary Porton, associate director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Program in Jewish Culture and Society. “The Israel Studies Project is generating a good deal of interest in Israel and issues involving Israel that wasn’t previously seen and could not be generated by any other program on campus.”
The Program in Jewish Culture and Society at University of Illinois is not a separate “Jewish studies program,” because it aims to integrate—not segregate—the study of Judaism into the university as a whole, Porton said. Courses are offered in various departments, including anthropology, Hebrew and religious studies. Visiting Israelis brought to campus by the Federation’s Israel Studies Project, such as journalists Yossi Klein Halevi and Hillel Halkin, Professor Hana Wirth-Nesher and author Gail Hareven, have spent anywhere from two weeks to a semester on campus.
In addition to the University of Illinois’ program, a postdoctoral fellowship program is currently in place at Northwestern University, and facets of the Israel Studies Project will be expanding to the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago by the next academic year.
The University of Chicago’s program will be administered by the Divinity School and is tentatively called “Culture and Religion in the Twenty-First Century: New Perspectives from Israel.” It will bring visiting Israeli scholars for individual quarter-long visits over a four-year period, and it will conclude with a colloquium in the fifth year to which all the visitors would be invited. The plan for the program is to bring highly accomplished scholars in fields such as religious thought, history, ethnography and cinema and drama.
Northwestern’s postdoctoral fellowship brings Israeli scholars to the university for two-year terms. Fellows teach courses on Israel that would otherwise be unavailable to students, such as Gender Relations in Israel, and The Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
“The fellowship really serves a very important role,” said Matthew Evans, who is in his second year as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern. “It gives the campus a more complete and balanced view of Israel by people who have actually lived and studied there.”
Liora Sion, Northwestern’s first-year fellow, concentrates on military sociology and anthropology, with an emphasis on peacekeeping missions and forces and the role of gender in military units.
“A visiting scholar brings a different academic outlook to the university,” Sion said. “We’re well versed in certain subjects that are very specialized because of where we are from and the way our research interests have been shaped.”
Nancy Gebhardt, associate director of University of Illinois at Chicago’s Jewish Studies Program, added that one of the highlights of the Israel Studies Project being planned for UIC is the opportunity to bring in experts who add a new dimension to course offerings. Shlomo Shoham, a leading Israeli criminologist, will be on UIC’s campus in Spring 2008 to teach a course titled Cultural Conflict, Crime and Deviance in Israel and present both a public and campus-wide lecture on his field of expertise.
“Once the upper-level students get past the general Jewish studies courses, you want to be able to offer a wider field,” Gebhardt said. “Bringing in major players from Israel really helps us put forth a program with breadth as well as depth.”
