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Pag* Fourteen
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Friday, Feb. 21, 1969
In Jewish-Black Relations
Brandeis-A Turning Point
BY ROBERT E. SEGAL
Ironic it is that at a point of
extreme tension in Jewish-Negro
relationships in America, drama
tized by the boil over at Brandeis
University, two distinguished
Christian scholars have written
poignantly and in sorrow of the
agony of Israeli-Arab relation
ships.
Alice and Roy Eckhardt, iden
tified with Lehigh University
and greatly admired by many
who follow Middle East develop
ments with care, have been in
terviewing dozens of government
officials, spiritual leaders, mili
tary men, and journalists re-
GREETINGS
Virginia Hilan
Barber Shop
1004 Virginia Ave., N. E.
cently in a study tour of the
Holy Land. In a tentative re
port (Christian Century, Jan.
15), they begin by noting that
“all men are held together by
the universe’s stern conditions:
the vagaries of time, the insis
tences of space, the fellowship
of suffering and death; these
link enemies everywhere, as they
do friends”. They follow with a
most perceptive and compas
sionate review of Jewish and
Arab opinion as a Fourth Round
of conflict threatens; and they
conclude by a pointed reference
to the solidarity in both camps
and to “their common tragedy”,
adding: "No one who observes
the agonies shared by the two
sides can totally extricate him
self from their plight. Their
oneness is such that, barring
miracles, they may have to share
the final mutuality of unlimited
destruction and death.”
God spare us from such a cruel
eventuality.
And, closer home, God spare
us from further escalation of bit
terness, misunderstanding ....
trust, and racism — white and
black — sadly characterizing the
deep throubles at Brandeis Uni
versity.
BROTHERHOOD GREETINGS
Entrekin’s Market
MUNICIPAL MARKET
239 Edgewood Ave. MU. 8-0315
Atlanta, Ga.
“Quality Meats”
“This siege (at Brandeis) has
united the outside (Boston)
black community like nothing I
have seen before,” a Black Uni
ted Front leader, Charles Turner,
declared at the height of the
Brandeis confrontation. His ut
terance found echo in a state
ment issued by Boston’s New
Urban League, a Red Feather
agency, declaring that “the racist
nature of the Brandeis adminis
tration has become crystal clear
in the unwillingness of the ad
ministration to respond posi
tively and creatively”. To which
might be added a section of a
prayer offered by Rev. Gilbert
Caldwell when a group from the
Metropolitan Committee of Black
Churchmen met at Brandeis 1q
show solidarity with those who
had seized Ford Hall.
“Where are the white march
ers of Selma and St. Augustine
today? Do they dare tell thing*
as they are?”
As is the case with black re
volt on the campuses of Sain
Francisco, Queens, Oshkosh, and
other places of higher learning,
the Brandeis seizure has brought
to the surface a half dozen and
more simmering grievances,
rooted, in part, in 350 years of
deprivation. To some sideline
observers, it was apparent that
two bones were stuck in the
throats of angry and passionate
■tudents, defying dislodgment.
One was the understandable rage
now overtaking black collegians
scheduled into the Transitional
Year Program; the other the in
sistence on the establishment at
Brandeis of an Afro-American
and African Studies department,
no strings attached.
The Transitional Year Program
prepares students with unsatis
factory academic credentials for
their freshman year. Black stu
dents, often recruited in a hasty
and desperate effort to help
prove the university’s good faith
in a determination to smash the
charge of white racism to small
bits, feel stigmatized in such a
program. Deprived of adequate
preparation for a college with
superb standards, they chafe un
der the challenge and tend to
throw desperation passes.
The black’s demand for the
establishment at Brandeis of a
funded Afro-American studies
department removed practically
m, toto from customary faculty
and administration supervision is
spiked with the seeds of its pre
dictable early demise. Under the
terms hoisted on the battle stan
dards of the bladk students, a
John Hatchett of New York Uni
versity or a Stokely Carmichael
could be placed in such a seat
of intended learning and poten
tial influence. Where might
white-black and Jewish-Negro
relationships be blown were such
a post occupied by a John Hatch-
. ett who has accused Jewish
* Teachers of poisoning the minds
of Negro youngsters in New
York? Who would pick up the
pieces of a detonated under
standing among blacks and Jews
if the chair went to a Stokeley
Carmichael who insists that
blacks must be for the Arab
cause?
“No one who observes the
agonies shared by the two sides
can totally extricate himself
from their plight,” the Eckardts
(see above) have written of
Israelis and Arabs. Such agonies,
alas, appear pandemic.
BROTHERHOOD
Greetings
•
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BROTHERHOOD GREETINGS
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BROTHERHOOD GREETINGS
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BROTHERHOOD GREETINGS
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JA. 2-6870
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J "\
BROTHERHOOD GREETINGS
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We Join In Urging
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