Mina Bayraktar, MSA Vice President said the organization received an email from SCiLL in the fall, requesting a meeting to brainstorm and gauge interest in the course. Bayraktar said MSA leadership met with faculty, but that they didn’t hear anything else until SCiLL leadership emailed them a flyer for the course.
MSA Development Chair Samee Ghaffar said what concerned them the most was the addition of an Israel-Palestine trip and the specific guest speakers chosen for the course.
After seeing the flyer, Bayraktar said they contacted SCiLL and set up another meeting to address MSA’s concerns. Before the meeting, she said MSA leadership sent their members a survey about the course. She said approximately 90 percent of the 53 respondents said they would not take the course.
When MSA leadership met with SCiLL again over winter break, Bayraktar said she felt they were open to feedback. But, she said most of MSA’s ideas didn’t end up being factored into the structure of the course.
“So, it felt as if they were asking our input, just as like a bumper sticker to say, you know, ‘we got the stamp of approval from MSA,’” Ghaffar said.
Trip to Israel and Palestine
In an email to The DTH, UNC Media Relations wrote that the course trip is a “group education abroad activity,” which is reviewed by the College of Arts and Sciences and approved by the Provost.
“An application for SCLL 190, which includes a safety plan for international travel, has been received and the review process is underway,” Media Relations wrote.
Decosimo said student safety is the utmost priority and that it currently seems the trip will happen as planned during spring break.
The UNC Global Affairs website says that undergraduate international travel outside of UNC Study Abroad “will only be approved to countries with a U.S. Department of State Level 1 or 2 Travel Advisory."
The current DOS travel advisory for Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza is a Level 3, detailing to “Reconsider Travel.”
The UNC Study Abroad Office wrote in an email to The DTH that it is not involved in travel for School of Civic Life and Leadership 190.
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“Do I feel safe? Not really. Do I trust the school to like, not put me in a crazy situation? Yeah,” an anonymous School of Civic Life and Leadership 190 student said. The student asked to remain anonymous for fear of social repercussions.
Decosimo said all elements of the course, including the trip to Israel, and potentially Palestine, are funded by the University.
“The Chancellor and the Provost are saying, ‘Helping our campus grow in this way is so important to us that we are willing to invest to have UNC students go to Israel, and if security allows, the Palestinian territories, to talk to people face to face, to hear them,’” Decosimo said.
Bayraktar said the trip was not made accessible to Muslim students because it falls during Ramadan. The observation involves fasting, which she said makes intense travel inconvenient.
Ghaffar said for Muslim students, going to the occupied Palestinian territories during this time could also be traumatic and disheartening.
“How would you feel if you were going to—during the holiest month of the Muslim year—Jerusalem, the second holiest site in Islam?” Ghaffar said. “You're going there to see it, basically, under an occupied state. You're going to see people being, potentially, treated unjustly.”
School of Civic Life and Leadership 190’s featured perspectives
School of Civic Life and Leadership 190 is only available with instructor approval by Rose, which Decosimo said he thinks is to ensure the students come from a variety of perspectives and to protect against two extremes: an echo chamber and complete polarization.
Rose did not provide a comment by the time of publication.
The anonymous student said they think the class has about 20 pro-Palestinian students and about 10 pro-Israeli students.
“But, my issue is that even though there are a lot of pro-Palestinian kids in the class, there is nobody who is actually Muslim, other than one [person],” they said.
MSA member Arwa Sattar, who wears a hijab, said she was approached by a School of Civic Life and Leadership 190 instructor about a month ago who asked her to take the course. He told her they hadn’t been getting interest from Muslim students, she said.
Bayraktar said she knows multiple hijabi students that were approached by an instructor and asked to take the course. She said they felt uncomfortable and targeted.
“Also, it was weird that he was still trying to convince me to tell my friends about it, even though I said that everyone I know isn’t for the class,” Sattar said.
Guest speakers for the course include religious leaders, activists, scholars and politicians with pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli perspectives. Decosimo said the lineup shows that there isn’t just one pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian view.
After researching the guest speakers, Ghaffar said he found one is a legal advisor to the Israeli Defense Forces in cases alleging war crimes such as sexual violence, torture and imprisonment of children. He said another speaker, a former Israeli parliament member, made comments about Palestinians deserving collective punishment.
Ghaffar said that regardless of one’s perspective, rhetoric of this nature is “not fruitful” for productive conversations.
Bayraktar said the Muslim and pro-Palestinian speakers and instructors are not representative of the majority of Muslim and pro-Palestinian views.
Decosimo said unique perspectives in the course include instructors Soliman, an Egyptian-American Muslim and Greer, who is Jewish. He said the instructors, who have relatives that once fought against each other in combat, model for students that differences don’t have to inhibit learning from others.
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