On the nation’s college campuses, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, to put it mildly, a heated subject. Michael Krasny, an English professor at San Francisco State as well as a KQED radio host, sees it every day.
“A free exchange of ideas could perhaps even lead to some light in addition to this heat. And there’s enough heat around this,” he said in an interview. “As a professor as well as a talk show host, I believe there can be real dialogue. People can broach a subject without having their emotions run amok. I’m making a plea for civility of discourse.”
Krasny is slated to be a featured speaker at the Conference on Interfaith Understanding, to be held all day Wednesday at San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral. Aimed at campus leaders and media representatives, the conference is open only to students.
It is the brainchild of Lillian Hyatt, a retired SFSU professor and the widow of David Hyatt, a former president of both the national and international Conference of Christians and Jews.
“When I was a professor at State, I’d see huge signs saying ‘Zionism is Racism,’ and I noticed many Jewish students were very uncomfortable on campus. But at that time I was really busy with writing and teaching and I did nothing about it,” she recalled. Now, 13 years after leaving SFSU’s campus, Hyatt “began to think about what I could do; things are getting worse and worse. I decided to work on conflict resolutions. I want to try to reduce campus tension.”
With an interfaith conference in mind, Hyatt assembled a diverse group of campus leaders in April, including Seth Brysk, executive director of San Francisco Hillel. The group set up Wednesday’s conference to not only address civil discourse among college faith and ethnic groups, but to promote responsible coverage by the campus media.
“The stories I’ve read in the school paper over the past few years tend to repeat the popular misconceptions they hear in the general media. They take everything one side or the other says at face value,” said Brysk. “Sometimes, they report the story in such a way to attract readership rather than report the facts of the case.”
Krasny, meanwhile, feels college newspapers and radio stations too often fall back on “self-styled spokespeople,” and wishes campus reporters would look beyond those who are “the loudest or make good copy.”
“There are a lot of people who have things to say that are more rational, thought-provoking or take a more sensible, multidimensional point of view,” he said. “We are not hearing all the voices on campus. I’d like to hear from regular students more. It’s important to get those voices in, not just the ones who are designated as leaders, fancy themselves to be leaders or are the squeakiest wheels.”
Thanks to the efforts of Ron Melvin, an organizer of the conference, Bank of America has created a $1,000 scholarship to be awarded to the college journalist whose work furthers campus interfaith or interracial understanding.
San Francisco Chronicle religion writer Donald Lattin will also address the conference.
While the session was planned well in advance of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the tragedies have made it much easier to obtain speakers and panelists, especially Muslims, Hyatt said. Among them, Iftekhar Hai of the United Muslims of America will serve on a panel with Rev. Gerald O’Rourke of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, Rev. Heng Sure of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery and Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council.
Hyatt hopes 50 to 70 students will attend. She wants to follow up the conference by setting up “living-room meetings” on local college campuses. Brysk is unsure whether September’s terrorism and the U.S. military response will result in a surge or drop in attendance.
“The people who are bent on raising hell on campus are not interested in us; they can get more attention raising hell,” said Hyatt, who was brought up an Orthodox Jew. “Hardliners are not coming. The people who are coming are prepared to make the move toward something else.”