A better perspective

Project Interchange brings important policymakers here to try to educate them on the complex issues and challenges that Israel faces today.

By JOSH HASTEN
University leaders (photo credit: Courtesy)
University leaders
(photo credit: Courtesy)
As she was leisurely sampling award-winning Israeli wines atop the Golan Heights, University of California, Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi was struck with an immense sense of school pride. With great delight, she discovered that the winery’s master wine-makers had in fact perfected their craft as students in her institution’s top-rated master’s program in viticulture enology.
Katehi, along with eight of her colleagues – all university presidents or chancellors from across the US – were recently in the country for a week exploring opportunities for academic and research collaboration and bolstering global relationships, as part of a delegation organized and subsidized by Project Interchange, an educational institute of the American Jewish Committee.
According to Project Interchange executive director Sam Witkin, the program, now in its 30th year, organizes around 25 educational seminars to Israel a year, which allow key influential American and global leaders from a wide variety of disciplines to advance their understanding of Israel, by getting acquainted with the country firsthand.
“The goal is to identify policymakers and opinion shapers whose voices affect the general public and to try to educate them on the complex issue and challenges that Israel faces today,” he says. “We take our guests behind the headlines, realizing that most of the information they receive from the media only tells part of the story. After a week here of intensive work and meetings, our participants have a much better perspective on the issues.”
Since its founding in 1982, the project has brought over 6,000 key figures to Israel from more than 70 countries.
Witkin says that in addition to this trip geared toward leaders in the academic community, past trips have targeted heads of state, parliamentarians, Rhodes Scholars, student leaders, college newspaper editors and journalists.
Not only are participants exposed to what makes Israel tick during their brief but intense week here, he continues, but “we follow the careers of most of our alumni, and are in touch often, providing them with analysis on current events from Israel throughout the year.”
He says that one of Project Interchange’s most prominent alumni, who came on the trip in 1986 with a group of young Hispanic attorneys from New York, is US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayo, the first Latina ever elected to that position.For North Carolina State University Chancellor Randy Woodson, Project Interchange was an opportunity to get reacquainted with old colleagues.
Woodson, who has been traveling to Israel since the 1980s, says that his university has been in a research partnership with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot since the 1990s, with a focus on advances in agricultural research.
In fact, he says, “our university already has a joint patent with Weizmann on a treatment that when sprayed on fruits and vegetables help slow their ripening, thus improving shipping quality, storage and shelf life.”
He notes that this joint technology is already being used “on nearly every apple shipped for export all over the world.”
As a result of meetings he had on this year’s seminar, he adds, he also hopes to enter into research collaborations between his university and Tel Aviv University.
“I am confident in the opportunities that will grow out of this trip,” he says. “We who are involved in higher education in the US are highly impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit and culture of the Israeli people, and hope to continue building relationships through research.”
For Beverly Daniel Tatum, the president of Spelman College – an all women’s and historically black college based in Atlanta, Georgia – her first trip to Israel, via Project Interchange, was a dream that finally came true. She had originally planned to come in the mid-1990s with an interfaith group of Jews, Christians and Muslims, but a wave of terrorist suicide bombings forced the cancellation of her trip.
Expressing a sense of security despite images about Israel in the media, Tatum says the goal of her visit was to develop a student exchange program between her school and universities here.
“I believe that every student should have a meaningful international experience before they graduate,” she says. “Since our school’s student body consists only of women, I was extremely pleased with discussions I had with a professor of women’s studies at Tel Aviv University in regard to the establishment of a student exchange for research opportunities.”
Tatum says that while Spelman College is considered a small institution, with only 2,100 students and no postgraduate studies programs, she is proud to have gotten the chance to come on the trip alongside the larger universities and as the first Project Interchange president of a historically black college.
In addition to meetings with academic officials from Tel Aviv University, Weizmann and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the delegation had the opportunity to meet with senior government officials and leaders of civil society across the social and political spectrum.
The group also toured Sderot to learn what life was like under terrorist rocket fire, and held meetings in Ramallah with top Palestinian Authority officials to learn more about the Israeli-Arab conflict from the Arab perspective. They also spent time with renowned Jerusalem-based venture capitalist Jonathan Medved to gain insight into how Israel became the “Start-Up Nation.”
While Witkin heads several Project Interchange missions to Israel a year, he was particularly awed by this group.
“This impressive delegation of university leaders opens doors to enhanced academic ties between Israel and a wide cross-section of US campuses,” he says. “The interest Israeli world-class research and educational facilities have generated attests to the country’s role as a global player in education and innovation.”