Alone at the UN, but among friends

A renowned Israeli educator shows the world a different face of Israel.

By BEN HARTMAN
Prof. Nava Ben-Zvi (photo credit: BEN HARTMAN)
Prof. Nava Ben-Zvi
(photo credit: BEN HARTMAN)
Though Israel is used to feeling alone at the United Nations, for one Israeli educator the experience as the only Israeli delegate at a first-of-its-kind UN academic conference in mid- November was a wholly positive experience.
Prof. Nava Ben-Zvi, president of Hadassah College in Jerusalem since 1999, represented Israel at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) on November 18 and 19 at the UN headquarters in New York.
The conference hosted 167 representatives from 40 countries, who took part in meetings and seminars that organizers said were meant to create a forum where they could share ideas on how to match strategies in academic innovation with the work being carried out by the UN.
A renowned Israeli academic, Ben-Zvi has a doctorate in chemistry from the Hebrew University, where she was once a professor. She was one of the founders of the Open University of Israel, as well as the Web-based learning system “Snunit” and Aviv – the first “virtual school” in Israel.
An international fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ben-Zvi worked for a number of years at the University of Maryland in College Park and is still proud to consider herself a Terrapin, the name of the school’s athletic team, and a type of turtle. She had the honor of lighting a torch at Israel’s 59th Independence Day celebrations on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
Ben-Zvi spoke to In Jerusalem from her offices at the campus of Hadassah College. Located in the building that once housed the original Hadassah hospital, the campus is a tranquil green island in Jerusalem’s city center. It is the only college downtown and is surrounded by the Old City on one side, and downtown Jerusalem and the Mea She’arim neighborhood on its flanks. Home to 2,200 students, of whom 65 percent are women and 14% Israeli Arabs, the college also teaches hundreds of Arab students from east Jerusalem.
While Ben-Zvi was the only Israeli delegate at the conference, she wasn’t the only academic from the region. There were delegates from universities in Iran and Lebanon, among others. Though the situation had the potential for tension, Ben-Zvi says none of the delegates from enemy states used the occasion to make a political point or to shun her as some sort of academic boycott of Israel.
“When I was introduced and asked to make some remarks, I thought to myself, ‘Here it begins’ – but nothing happened,” Ben-Zvi says, adding that the delegates from Iran and Lebanon did not turn their backs or stage walk-outs when she spoke. She also says she was touched when a Pakistani delegate who was presiding over a workshop gave her a round of applause when she was introduced.
“The fact that I was an Israeli wasn’t the central aspect of my being there. I was there as an academic,” Ben-Zvi says, adding that she didn’t try to present herself as an Israeli or to build bridges with delegates from states hostile to Israel.
“I don’t think it’s possible to do this in an hour and then leave. I think that the best reason for people from different backgrounds to get together is to talk about issues. I never sat there and said these are my enemies and I am meeting with them. I thought the opposite; here are friends from different academic institutions and different structures and aspirations, and let’s talk and understand one another.”
When she was seen as “the Israeli,” people were eager to talk to her about issues where Israel is recognized as a global leader.
“People came to me wanting to talk about science and technology and the things we’re doing. They also asked about e-learning. These are not things that I came and presented to them. People came to me and wanted to talk to me about our hi-tech and science advancements and capabilities.”
While she says she didn’t feel at liberty to speak at length about Israel’s hi-tech industry or multitude of startups, she did speak about the unique challenges faced by Israel’s higher education system, which is faced with the daunting but often very beneficial role of being a sort of academic ingathering of exiles.
“I could tell them about how the higher education system in Israel deals with a very heterogeneous population of students. Once, in the ’50s and ’60s, the only people in these places were from the middle class, and today the system deals with students of every color from every corner of the world. It’s a very challenging situation that demands that you figure out how to find a shared language, and how to protect one another’s cultures while drawing from them as well. It’s more difficult, but the potential results are greater.”
Though she and the other representatives didn’t wear name tags and she didn’t tout her blue-and-white credentials on her forehead, Ben-Zvi says that she nonetheless “felt a great deal of pride” that she was representing Israel there. Furthermore, she says that the presence of academics like her at such events can achieve things on a person-to-person level that diplomats and governments cannot.
“We can present and cooperate on subjects that are beyond the diplomatic issues and this is a good thing. We can also see the world and the world can see us in a different way.”
Ahead of the launch of the UNAI, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “The United Nations understands the enormous impact of scholarship, innovation and ideas. We are trying to harness that great power to build a better world; a world where human ingenuity will make our homes, communities and consumption patterns socially and environmentally sustainable; a world where research receives the funding and support it needs to defeat disease, deprivation and despair; a world where the ‘unlearning’ of intolerance will bridge barriers that still divide nations and peoples.”
The talks at the UNAI focused largely on 10 universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, literacy, sustainability and conflict resolution, “all of which were based on the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals targets,” said Kiyo Akasaka, under-secretary-general for Communications and Public Information at the UN.