“This teach-in here at a university is particularly relevant because every college and every university in Gaza has been destroyed over the past two years.” Tim Seidel, associate professor of Peacebuilding, Development, and Global Studies, described the reality of Israel’s continued war on Gaza: “Over 18,000 students have been killed and over 750 teachers have been killed.”
Seidel and over thirty others gathered in the Student Life Center as a part of a Palestine teach-in hosted by EMU’s Peace Fellowship Club on Oct. 3. The teach-in opened with Seidel, who presented a short history and educational piece about the conflict. He covered terms such as settler colonialism, genocide, and solidarity and how they related to the conflict. Seidel also highlighted education, saying, “This is part of genocide where a settler power, or a power, is trying to target education. It’s called scholasticide and it’s a critical element of the project of genocide … a population that doesn’t have education institutions has no future.” He emphasized that the importance of not doing “buisness as usual” during a genocide, such as hosting education sessions like the teach-in.
Following Seidel’s remarks, several students who were involved in a recent protest in Washington, D.C., hosted by Mennonite Action came on stage to talk about their experiences. More about the protest itself can be read in the Sept. 25 edition of the Weather Vane. Junior engineering major Renae Benner described how she got to where she is on the issue. “I didn’t really know that much about Palestine and Israel until about two years ago at a teach-in kind of like this that happened soon after Oct. 7… Since then the more that I learned about it the more I felt a responsibility to do something.” Benner, who is also co-president of EMU Peace Fellowship, also recounted the difficulty of staying persistent, “it’s hard to find the motivation to keep working,” but also the importance of staying vigilant. “It feels important to me to just keep staying informed and to not turn my eyes away from things that are hard to learn … The only way to stay empathetic is to stay informed.”
Mana Acosta, who graduated from EMU last year with a degree in engineering, echoed Benner’s laments, saying, “To me it’s very overwhelming to hear this news day in and day out, and it felt really important to do something.” Referring to the protest, Acosta stated “I [felt] really motivated to do it because of this solidarity that I’ve heard other people share with me that they experienced through events like this … it’s really a beautiful thing, it’s a hard thing, but it’s a beautiful thing to know you’re not alone and it’s a powerful thing, solidarity is so powerful.”
Second-year environmental science major Ella Richer also described her experience being arrested. “One of the biggest things about the protest for me that I noticed was my very apparent privilege … I was making small talk with the officers and like joking around.” She was also struck by the effect of the protest on the officers, “some of [the officers] were crying while arresting us.” Like the other two, Richer mentioned that “it’s fatiguing to keep working … but having spaces like this … having community … it truly is important.”
A short discussion followed the presentations, with those gathered breaking into groups to discuss what solidarity might look like moving forward. Among EMU staff and students, members of JMU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine were also present. Further outreach and education were common answers to the question of “What next?”
Frank Lien, an EMU junior attending that night, is an example of how education can have a major impact. When first encountering the issue, Lien says he was slightly pro-Israel. As he heard from more sources his opinion changed, but he says, “I wasn’t fully convinced,” believing that “there were partisans on both sides trying to push their narrative.” Lien didn’t stop though, and continued to research the issue, citing an independent Jewish newspaper he read as a turning point in his perspective. “We have trauma, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop caring about people.” His take away, “What I learned from this conflict is that I have to read more from more sources.”
