Innermost Parts

Last Wednesday, Jonathan Mark of The Jewish Week published an article striking back at the perception that Israel is, even among Jews, losing the respect of the American people that it has enjoyed for so long.  While I try to avoid injecting myself into Israeli political debates as much as possible, I do find it [...]

Commencement for the Class of 2010 occurred today at 10:30 at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.  (Congrats!) We’ve received word that students protesting the choice of Oren as commencement speaker snuck copies of this letter in with the graduation programs, articulating their reasons against Oren speaking. However, a volunteer and Brandeis student says that students [...]

The competing claims on what Michael Oren represents, and over the appropriate way to handle his invitation to be Commencement speaker, fascinate me. How effective is the framing of different competing claims? Is their activism strategic and are their tactics well-thought-out? I find this stuff fascinating. Here’s what I think is going on: The competing [...]

So people have been excitedly pointing to the pro-Jehuda pro-Oren petition circulating around. The number of petition signers is huge – over 3000. In fact, it’s over the entire student population at Brandeis. What’s going on? Well, it turns out that Adam Ross’s petition got the attention of one of the largest right-wing blogs in [...]

So this whole Michael Oren thing – the line is that Oren divides Brandeis. People don’t seem to understand how that is true. But Oren divides me! Please understand, I’m a patriotic Israeli citizen. I love my country. I’m also a proud “left-ish,” and people on the left tend to be pretty harsh on Israel. [...]