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Infeld: Student Leadership on Darfur Advocacy Is "Inspiring"
July 19, 2005Comments (0) | Add | E-mail this to a friendHillel International President Avraham Infeld recently sent the following letter to the editor of The Forward about the leadership Jewish students have demonstrated on behalf of the victims of violence in Darfur.
To the Editor,
One of the most heartening developments in the Jewish community's work on behalf of Africa (Forward, July 8, 2005) has been the activism of Jewish college students as individuals, as campuses and internationally. Young people have embraced the Darfur crisis with the same energy as previous generations opposed apartheid in South Africa or supported the struggle for civil rights in the United States.
A key activist in galvanizing the campuses has been Ben Bixby, the past-president of the Jewish Student Association at Georgetown University, who worked with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience to create STAND, Students Take Action Now: Darfur. STAND, with 80 chapters in 24 states and six Canadian provinces, has promoted an aggressive campaign to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur. Among its projects, STAND sponsored a fast day for Darfur on April 7 in which students gave up a luxury item and donated the value to Darfur relief. Hillel groups worked with STAND and its media supporter, mtvU, to implement the STANDFast campaign for Darfur on dozens of campuses.
Students have invested a great deal of creativity in support of Darfur. At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, student Anna Thompson organized Hillel's Students United for Darfur Awareness Now (SUDAN). The group set up a mock refugee camp where students spent the night handing out information, collecting signatures for a petition and selling green bracelets. Texas Hillel's Darfur awareness group, the White Rose Society, launched a petition to gather 40,000 signatures, signifying the number of Darfurians killed in the genocide. New York University's Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life hosted a Freedom Seder in the park, bringing 100 students together for discussion, speakers and reflection on the genocide in Sudan. The Bronfman Center later hosted a show of art created by Darfur refugee children that was featured prominently and positively in The New York Times. In mid May, five students from the Claremont Colleges conducted an 11-day road trip up the coast of California and back down through the Central Valley to promote Darfur awareness in high schools, synagogues and among legislators. The students collected more than 1,500 signatures for a petition against the violence in Darfur. The list of local campus activities on behalf of Darfur is long and inspiring.
The Darfur campaign has enabled Jewish groups to work together and to partner with other organizations on campus. The Weinberg Tzedek Hillel program and the American Jewish World Service have cooperated extensively locally and nationally, while campus Hillel groups have worked with Habitat for Humanity, Amnesty International, African-American student organizations and other like-minded groups.
The Darfur campaign is likely to increase its pace on campus in the coming year as Hillel and other organizations sponsor national speaking tours with Darfurian refugees, participate in rallies at the United Nations, promote petitions and undertake other educational activities. Although the Sudanese government has shown itself to be resistant to change, international pressure is the only way to save lives in Darfur – and our students know it.
Avraham Infeld
International President
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
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