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The Lure Of Jewish Studies

Michigan State plans $8 million program centered
on Israel and America after 1948.

LONNY GOLDSMITH
Staff Writer

INIE ichigan State University,
hoping to lure more
Jewish students to cam-
pus and also send them
to Israel as part of study abroad,
intends to expand its modest Jewish
Studies Program, giving it new faculty,
a new focus and new vitalirv.
"The intention is to further
enhance the environment for Jewish
students at MSU," said MSU
President M. Peter McPherson. "It
will be good for Jewish students now
and in the future."
The East Lansing school has an esti-
mated 2,000 Jewish students, just

Lonny Goldsmith can be reached at
(248) 354-6060 ext 263, or by e-mail
at: lgoldsmith@thejewishnews.com .

under 5 percent of its 43,000
In an interview held in the
enrollees. The president, who said
Southfield offices of The Jewish News
Jewish students from the East Coast
Monday, McPherson was at his most
helped vitalize the campus when he
jovial when discussing the program as
was an undergraduate 40 years ago,
a way to increase the number of stu-
said he hoped the new program would
dents who study in Israel.
attract more Jewish students both from
"Students who study abroad get a
the Detroit area and
more sophisticated view
other states.
of America," he said.
Above: MSU students in
If an $8 million
McPherson described
Jerusalem's Old City with
endowment effort suc-
MSU's
study abroad
Danny Herman, Israeli
ceeds, the program
program
as the largest
archeologist, and MSU
would boast four new
among
the
nation's uni-
faculty Ken Waltzer:
faculty members as well
versities, with more than
as new courses, lectures
1,500 students taking
and symposiums — all focused on
advantage of it each year.
post-1948 Israel and the United
McPherson, who came to MSU in
States. That focus would distinguish
1993, said his commitment to foreign
the MSU offering from the scores of
study, a hallmark of his tenure as presi-
other Jewish Studies programs around
dent, was conceived and nurtured dur-
the country, most of which examine
ing his six years as the head of the U.S.
Jewry over millennia rather than
Agency for International Development
decades. (See related story, page 12.)
and later as deputy director of the U.S.

Department of Treasury in the second
Reagan administration.
Spearheading the proposal is a 12-
member advisory board, created last
March and drawn primarily from the
Oakland-Macomb-Wayne area, which
provides 40 percent of MSU's enroll-
ment. The board chairman, Michael
Serling, a Birmingham lawyer, said he
expected representatives to soon be
added from other areas, including
Grand Rapids and Flint.
So far, the board has raised
$350,000, with a significant amount
donated by Paul Borman, the former
owner of the Farmer Jack supermarket
chain and a 1954 graduate of MSU.
Borman, who declined to say exactly
how much he had contributed, said in
a telephone interview from Florida that
he hoped the program would mandate
travel to Israel for its students. Being in
a classroom isn't as effective for learning

1/29
1999

Detroit Jewish News 11