Creating an Inclusive Space During Wartime: A Green Terrace at Mount Scopus Campus (Course 20605)
Lectures: Dr. Michal Braier, Dr. Noga Keidar, Dr. Diego Rotman
Mount Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is ethnically and religiously diverse. Surveys held during the current war that started on October 7 and provoked the suspension of the academic year, warn that half of the Palestinian students and a quarter of the Jewish students consider not continuing their academic studies. In addition, about half of both the Palestinian and Jewish students admit they are afraid of the other group (Achord Center)
As a result of this atmosphere, at the beginning of November, we, Diego Rotman (Theatre Studies), Michal Braier (the Urban Clinic and Minerva Center for Human Rights), and Noga Keidar (the Urban Clinic and Sociology and Anthropology), started a dialogue with some of our most engaged students to explore what it would mean to return to the Mt. Scopus campus, during a state of War. We discussed how the war is affecting us all: the students, the academic and administrative staff - all immersed in a state of fear, pain, and uncertainty. After two sessions, we realized we needed to facilitate a process that would allow us all to build a new inclusive gathering place on campus, which will be ready for everyone right when they return to study, teach, and work. Even though the opening of the academic year has been postponed until January 2024, we received special approval from the Rector, with the support of the Faculty of Humanities and the Botanical Garden on campus, to open an urgent course titled: “Creating an Inclusive Space During Wartime: (The) Green Terrace at Mount Scopus Campus.”
Due to the urgency, the course was opened immediately. It offers six sessions of three hours each, while each session includes inspirational lectures on relevant topics to supply analytical building blocks for our action, as well as practical work in planning, constructing, and maintaining the terrace. We also spend time in each session developing additional initiatives related to making the campus an inclusive and safe space for all. We believe such a learning process could be the first step in rebuilding a shared future of mutual trust on campus.
Our first session was scheduled for Thursday, November 30 - a morning that began with a terror attack at the entrance of Jerusalem, in which four people were killed and seven were wounded. Despite the fear and the mobility challenges, less than two hours later, almost all students showed up, among them about half Palestinians and another half are secular, religious, and ultra-orthodox Jewish students. The group is also diverse in terms of academic disciplines and seniority, and includes BA, MA, and even two Ph.D. students. By the end of the first session, that included an opening lecture and a mapping exercises of possible sites, one Palestinian student in her third year shared her feelings with the group: “During the last weeks, the school-related WhatsApp groups made me think it would be better not to meet face to face, but to hold this academic year on Zoom. After today, I really want to return to campus. It feels like there’s no war out there, though I know there is one.”
In the two sessions that followed, we continued to get to know one another, learn about the planning of community and gathering places from artistic, environmental, sociological, historical, and planning perspectives, and worked on envisioning our own terrace. We are currently working vigorously on the construction of the terrace, and planning activities and continuous construction throughout the academic year.
To the Photogallery | Link to syllabus
The course in the press
Interview about the course in "Kan Tarbut" with Goel Pinto (Hebrew)
Nobuo Fujiwara, 15.12.2023, Ashai Newspaper [Japanese]: "ユダヤとパレスチナ、共存の道探ろう 対立のなか始まった大学の試み"
Article about courses in relation to the War in Israel, by Ilana Schtotland, Maariv, 25.12.2023
Map in process:
The course is developed in dialogue with the International Research-Group "Models of Urban Evolution", Co-PI, University of Toronto-Hebrew University of Jerusalem Research & Training Alliance, with Dan Silver, Mark Fox, Shauna Brail, Yair Grinberger, Diego Rotman, Emily Silverman, and Noga Keidar.
