By Amy Rosenthal, JNS
By avoiding difficult aspects of the Middle East conflict, the University of North Carolina is simply promoting emotionally driven narratives.
The University of North Carolina has found a new way to miseducate students about Israel. By focusing on conversation itself in lieu of foundational knowledge, any and all narratives can be introduced and presented as equal. How did this happen?
In 2024, UNC launched classes in the new School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL), established to help students navigate ideological and political divisions. The confidence in civil-discourse techniques led faculty to extend the concept into the Middle East by offering the course, “Courageous Conversations: Israel and Palestine on Campus.” UNC held a public forum to tout its efforts, titled “Reviving Civil Discourse on Campus.” Yet students who were interviewed, including Jewish ones, said they left that class feeling confused.
Nevertheless, faculty expressed great confidence in their conversational techniques. They proclaimed that if only their way of discourse had been around in Germany in the 1930s, the Holocaust could have been prevented. “The heroes are the bridge-builders,” they said of themselves.
Since the course professor, John Rose, is not an expert on the Middle East, he hired three others to assist. One instructor, Simon Greer, is the former CEO of Jewish Funds for Justice (later, Bend the Arc) and now a host of Courageous Conversations at The Nantucket Project (TNP). Another course leader, Tom Scott, is co-founder of the TNP.
The TNP website states: “Our mission is pluralism, our method is dialogue.” Project leaders claim to be “gutsy and original,” with “a divine imperative to love more, to connect more,” and proudly proclaim that “we’ve found a way out of toxic polarization.” The third instructor, Saad Soliman, is the director of Time Done Alliance for Safety and Justice. He claims that the Middle East conflict is about “two truths,” i.e., two opinions of equal value.
As part of the course, the SCiLL team took students to Israel. Clips from a documentary of that experience showed Scott proclaiming his bravery by saying that while others refused to address the Middle East conflict, UNC “ran straight at” the issue.
In the film, an Arab man was shown telling students, “Don’t take sides.” This is similar to the messaging not to take sides from Imam Antepli at Duke University, who was also shown in the video. The implication is that there is no right or wrong; there are just two sides to the conflict, two equal truths, even when only one side promotes terrorism against Israel and Jews.
It’s no wonder that students are confused. Had the course instructors truly been courageous as they claimed, they would have made clear that “Palestine” does not exist. Through personal communication, Greer said that when he uses the word “Palestine,” he is referring to the Palestinian territories. Neither he nor any panelist explained their use of the word, nor did they acknowledge that “Palestine” means all of Israel to the “river to the sea” crowd.
It would have been courageous to explain to students that, although the Arab man in the film said “to hate someone you have to know them,” from birth, Gazan children are taught to hate Jews (whom they don’t know). Lack of courage was manifested by the apparent reluctance to address the religious cause of the conflict. There was no evidence that students understood that the Quran and other Islamic writings actually encourage followers to kill Jews. Students appeared to be unaware that Hamas is following a religious playbook. Can the conflict, which has its roots in Islamic religious texts, be solved with conversation?
By avoiding difficult aspects of the Middle East conflict, UNC is simply promoting emotionally driven narratives. Those who support Hamas—and there are plenty on campus—are probably pleased to see their ideology accepted as just another opinion that is worthy of respectful conversation. On the surface, the discussions appear benign, but they normalize terrorism, a dangerous slippery slope that leaves vulnerable students feeling confused.
Free speech is just an illusion when there is no courage to discuss uncomfortable truths. There is nothing free about the course either, which purportedly costs $500,000. There is even a plan to increase the number of students next year and to add Tom Scott as a professor. In the end, UNC’s SCiLL effort is just another way to confuse vulnerable students while legitimizing terrorism against Israel and Jews.
