With reintroduced Israel, Palestine class, students expand discourse

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In the spring of 2009, the History and Middle Eastern Studies departments at Syracuse University introduced a course called “Israel & Palestine: A Historical Approach.” Nearly 15 years later, Amy Aisen Kallander, a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is reintroducing the course for undergraduate and graduate students.

The course was initially taught as a senior seminar and capstone class in the Middle Eastern Studies department. For the spring 2024 semester, Kallander has double-listed the course as a 400/600 level class, open to students of all levels.

“I felt (I wanted to teach this class) because of the three months-plus of Israeli assault on Gaza, and the fact that the university has yet to have a lot of events focused on Palestinians, Palestinian history or even Israeli history, or even just historicizing current events,” Kallander said. “It made sense. This is what I can contribute.”

The History department has less oversight on which classes are offered, Kallander said. Kallander was asked to teach a class, and she decided to focus it on the history of Israel and Palestine.

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the Re’im music festival, the Israel Defense Forces responded by continuously bombing the Gaza Strip. As of Dec. 31, 70% of the territory’s homes have been bombed, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. Since the war started, 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials, while 1,200 people were killed in the initial Oct. 7 attack.

Last week, the International Court of Justice called for Israel to take “all measures within its power” to abstain from harming Palestinians.

“The United States does a pretty good job of giving Israelis a voice and showing them as individuals, showing that Israelis have different ideas and different political opinions,” Kallander said. “Israelis are generally seen as people who are worthy of empathy. And at the same time, Palestinians are often silenced and sometimes dehumanized.”

The six-person class itself is a split of undergraduate and graduate students, from third-year undergraduates to Ph.D. students. A master’s student in the Maxwell School, who chose to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution, said they are hoping the class will give them more confidence to speak about the conflict and its history.

“I have close friends that are Jewish and lean pro-Israel. I have close friends in the Arab and Muslim world that lean pro-Palestine,” they said. “It’s definitely interesting to just see how it all comes together.”

Morgan Albano, a junior in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, wanted to take the class after feeling underwhelmed by the university’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. Albano said the university has not been willing to listen to student concerns.

At a University Senate meeting in November, Chancellor Kent Syverud stated the university would prioritize student safety over students’ right to academic freedom. On Wednesday, Syverud charged a working group to develop a statement that clarifies SU’s stance on academic freedom and free speech, which he initially introduced at the end of the fall semester. The statement follows several demonstrations and protests held on campus in response to the war.

“Just to be incredibly empirical and defiant is a reflection of the immaturity and animosity targeted at pro-Palestinian or even Arab students,” Albano said.

With the small class size, Kallander focuses the curriculum on individuality. Students have the choice to pick a book they’d like to read and later present it to the class with other students who read the same material. The class is a three-hour seminar with long-running discussions and meets only once a week, Kallander said.

Tali Datskovsky, a third-year Ph.D. candidate studying anthropology, said they grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and has connections to the Israel. While not religious or a Zionist herself, she said the class offers them an environment where they can talk about the conflict in a different light and work through their understanding with their peers.

“Curriculum is one of the few things that faculty have a lot of autonomy over,” Kallander said. “Courses are approved by this really long process. They’re approved by a department. They’re approved by the curriculum committee and then they’re approved by the Senate. Senior administrators don’t really play a role.”

The master’s student and Datskovsky both said they hope the class is a sign of hope for expanding discourse among SU students regarding the war.

“For me, history is a way of storytelling and a way that we understand people and try to think about their lives and learn about them,” Kallander said.