Campus Timeline
The following is a list of major events during the last
school year on North American campuses:
• May 2002: Following the "Passover massacre bombing
M Israel, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
launches its first Israel advocacy mission. The program
draws 400 students for the five-day mission, and 80 remain
for two weeks of advocacy training at Tel Aviv University.
• May 1, 2002: The American Israel Public Affairs
Committee rolls out an expanded campus program,
tripling the size of its budget and staffing. The new initia-
rive works with four key activists on each of 60 campuses
that AIPAC feels produce future political leaders. The
activists attend intense summer and winter training with
advocates and policymakers.
• Summer 2002: Twenty-six groups come together to
form the Israel on Campus Coalition, a national coordi-
nating body that provides high-profile speakers and advo-
cacy training for students.
• August 2002: The Jewish National Fund's Caravan for
Democracy takes 13 students on a two-week training
seminar to Israel. The students visit journalists, politicians
and terror victims and learn how to write letters to the
editor of newspapers and organize on campus.
• August 2002: As part of its first Israel advocacy pro-
gram, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity trains 300 delegates
at its international convention.
• Aug. 20-25, 2002: Hillel holds its annual Charles
Schusterman International Student Leaders Assembly at
Camp Moshava in Honesdale, Pa. About 425 students
plan campus activism for the year
• September 2002: A sukk.ah at the University of
Colorado is desecrated the day after Palestinian official
Hanan Ashrawi makes a speech on campus. Groups of
various faiths come together to rebuild it
• Sept. 9, 2002: Rioting by anti-Israel protesters leads to
the cancellation of a speech by former Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University in
Montreal. Afterward, campus administrators impose a
temporary ban on Mideast-related activities.
• Sept. 16, 2002: Academic Daniel Pipes unveils Campus
Watch, a Web site to monitor professors and institutions he
deems anti-Israel or anti-American. The site ignites a furor
CAMPUS from page 30
dressed as Israeli soldiers shot squirt guns
at other students pretending to be
Palestinians at a checkpoint. This year, a
Middle East dialogue group formed.
At San Francisco State University —
where anti-Israel protesters taunted
Jewish students last spring by chanting
"Hitler didn't finish the job" — a
comparative religion course on
Judaism, Islam and Christianity is
"filled to capacity," said Marc
Dollinger, acting director of the
school's Jewish studies program.
National Moves
Major Jewish organizations have made
noticeable inroads as well. Student
in academia, with many denigrating it as McCarthyist.
• Sept. 17, 2002: Harvard President Lawrence Summers
blasts what he considers growing anti-Semitism on cam-
pus, singling out a movement to force universities to divest
their holdings in companies that do business with Israel.
Other campus presidents, including those from Tufts, the
University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan,
follow Summers' lead in rejecting divestment.
• October 2002: The second National Student
Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement takes
place at the U-M in Ann Arbor. The conference gains
much media attention, but its divestment campaign flops
over the course of the year amid administrative rejection
and counter-petitions.
• Oct. 7, 2002: The American Jewish Committee pub-
lishes a full-page ad in the New York Times with 312 sig-
natures of college presidents decrying intimidation of
Jewish students on campus.
• November 2002: Chabad announces a plan to expand
from 61 to 81 full-time Chabad houses on campus.
• November 2002: The annual General Assembly of the
United Jewish Communities is complemented by a student
'Zionism Teach-in" that draws about 300 people. The event
is run by the Jewish Agency for Israel and USD-Hagshania.
• December 2002: Hillel director Richard Joel, one of
the top leaders in organized Jewish life, announces he will
leave his post to become president of Yeshiva University.
• December 2002: Concordia University's student gov-
ernment tries to remove Hiltel as a sanctioned student
group for distributing material related to the Israel
Defense Force. The move ultimately fails.
• January 2003: Hillel launches Israel 101, a campaign
to fill the next 101 days with innovative, student-led
Israel programming.
• March 2003: The Anti-Defamation League releases a
survey showing 106 anti-Semitic incidents on college cam-
puses in 2002, a 24 percent increase over the previous year.
• March 27, 2003: Israel at Heart, a private initiative run
by New York philanthropist Joey Low, begins its second
annual two-week program to bring Israeli students to North
American campuses to talk about living with terrorism.
• March 30-April 1, 2003: At its annual policy confer-
ence, AIPAC presents the White House with pro-Israel peti-
tions bearing, 55,000 signatures from students at 60 colleges.
activists with AIPAC, for example,
collected 55,000 signatures on pro-
Israel petitions at 60 college campus-
es. The signatures were published in
50 campus newspapers with the spon-
sorship of campus groups such as the
College Democrats and College
Republicans.
Caravan for Democracy, a Jewish
National Fund program highlighting
Israel's democratic values, brought
high-profile Israeli speakers to about
20 campuses this year.
But the air of victory among many
pro-Israel activists is tinged with ten-
sion. When junior Daniel
Frankenstein ran for student body
president at the University of
California at Berkeley last month,
his peers spat on him and launched
into anti-Zionist diatribes.
Frankenstein ascribes his loss partly
to the anti-Zionist campaign against
him. But he still thinks pro-Israel
activists on campus have scored some-
thing of a victory this year.
Despite these problems, we are
crushing the pro-Palestinian forces, he
said. "Last year, we were simply trying
to cover our asses," he said, referring
to the storm of activity that jarred
Jewish students at Berkeley, site of
some of the most intense campus
anti-Israel propaganda.
Too afraid to sport his Israeli soccer
jersey on campus last year,
Frankenstein now proudly wears pro-
Israel clothing, attributing his confi-
dence to advocacy training provided
by AIPAC. ❑
FOR
ILAN RAMON
The name "Ilan"
means tree.
Before he died, astronaut Ilan
Ramon of Israel sent the fol-
lowing message back to
earth...
"1 call upon every Jew in the
world to plant a tree in the land
of Israel during the coming
year. I would like to see 13 or
l4 million new trees planted in
Israel exactly one year from
now, on the anniversary of th
launching."
—Ilan Ramon
To plant a tree in Israel
in honor of Ilan Ramon and
his fellow astronauts, go to
www.jewish.com .
Click on Donations to Israel.