Having grown up with all kinds of political activity on campus, I have always been surprised that so little is visible at the universities here. Maybe they think we have enough politics in this country, or maybe the students are too busy earning a living, or maybe people are trying to get a broader and more intelligent perspective on the specific situation, but the amount of actual political activity on campus is pretty minimal. So I was a little surprised to read Benjamin Pogrund’s piece in the pages of Ha’aretz today. Then I remembered how I graduated from the University of Rochester in 1966. Our distinguished speaker was Richard M. Nixon, coming back from a long silence after “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” And we all know it was going to be trouble. A large group of us didn’t want to attend the ceremony but we were warned that we wouldn’t get our degrees, and so there was a brief movement to show up, but turn our chairs around on the green in protest when he began speaking. But we didn’t. We sat there and listened to him, and from that day he came back into politics, became president, and I left the U.S. instead. Often I regret my silence, but then I remember: At the very least, the campus is supposed to be a place of open discussion on all sides.
Maybe there was a dinner invitation tonight i forgot about. I keep feeling there should have been something happening today but i don’t even have the energy to look in my diary. If you missed me at your table, I’m sorry. Really. But my days of bouncing around Tel Aviv on Thursday nights are past. Dinner at some friends, a little dessert on the beach, maybe a drink after at shesek… Not tonight Josephine. How did we ever spend our thursday nights from midnight to two cheering Sharon Moldavi at Roxannes? And how do people still do that kind of thing (of course in much smaller nightclubs now, but the principle remains the same). You’re going to have to look for other blogs to get the heartbeat of Tel Aviv. I’m just going to order a pizza and watch the stupid news.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that with all these exercises going on aiming to defray the rockets aimed at us from everywhere there would be at least a little talk about really large tennis rackets to bounce the bombs right back at the sender, wouldn’t you?
Nonsense? maybe, but the real news is not much better.
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