Advocacy
ROSE PROJECT LEADERSHIP COUNCIL Co-Chairs Jeffrey H. Margolis James Weiss, MD Members Steven L. Edwards Shalom C. Elcott Douglas K. Freeman Eugene Spiritus, MD Gerald Solomon Lisa Armony, Director www.JewishOC.org/ Rose
Jewish Federation & Family Services is grateful to our partners and investors who have made possible the development and impact of the Rose Project. Ernest & Irma Rose Foundation Margolis Family Foundation Adam & Gila Milstein Family Foundation Michael & Amy Morhaime Samueli Foundation Robert & Linda Yellin
Leadership
Education
Dialogue
ROSE PROJECT INTRODUCES INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP PROGRAM The Rose Project took a major leap forward in its effort to empower Jewish student leadership with the launch of the Jewish Campus Leadership Initiative (JCLI). This unique program is designed to create a continuous pipeline of Jewish student leaders at Orange County universities who make significant contributions to their campus communities and work to maintain a civil climate for Israel. The first cohort of 15 students from three campuses began their two-year JCLI journey in October. Through seminars, workshops and retreats with local and international thought leaders and experts, students gain leadership, advocacy and relationship building skills. The program emphasizes Jewish values of leadership, helping students connect their goals and passions with their Jewish identity. Students also expand their knowledge of Israeli history, politics and culture while developing skills that enable them to dialogue on complex issues and build bridges to other communities.
JCLI students with Broadcom Co-Founder and Chairman Henry Samueli and Samueli Foundation Executive Director Gerald Solomon
JCLI students at a private briefing with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat
Chief Political Correspondent Gil Hoffman. A November retreat brought them together with other Southern California Jewish student leaders for a weekend of training on civic engagement and grassroots mobilization. JCLI students also attended Birthright, the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC and Hasbara Fellowships Israel advocacy training seminar in Israel. Throughout the program, JCLI students are encouraged to implement their newly learned skills by seeking leadership roles and developing initiatives. To date, JCLI participants from Chapman University have founded a pro-Israel student group and established weekly Shabbat gatherings on campus. Other students have taken on executive spots in Jewish and secular student organizations, landed a position in student government and developed Israel advocacy initiatives. Mentoring is a key component of JCLI, and all students are matched with mentors in their professional fields. Highlighting the year have been meetings with top Jewish CEOs including Broadcom Co-Founder and Chairman Henry Samueli and Michael Morhaime, Co-Founder and President of Blizzard Entertainment. In their third year, JCLI students will become mentors themselves as they guide their younger peers into leadership roles.
Developed by Rose Project Director Lisa Armony and facilitated by Student Leadership Coordinator Judith Flacks, the JCLI is informed by the latest research on how college students identify with Judaism and Israel. Students are encouraged to engage on issues important to them, within or outside the Jewish community, in order to create vibrant Jewish participation throughout their campuses. Faculty for this year’s program includes Rabbi Ed Feinstein, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom; Re’ut Institute CEO Roi Keidar; and Nate Miller, a former speechwriter for Israel’s UN mission. Students met for private briefings with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, retired IDF Col. Miri Eisin and Jerusalem Post
JCLI students enjoyed a tour of Blizzard Entertainment with Co-Founder and President Michael Morhaime
Message from the Co-Chairs The late 2013 vote and victory of a small but decisive representation of American Studies Association (ASA) members to boycott Israeli academia was disheartening. It is one of the most poignant examples to date of a group buying into the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) rhetoric that ultimately seeks Israel’s elimination. We are pleased to report that academic boycotts don’t sit well with university faculty and administrators who cherish the free exchange of ideas with colleagues around the globe, regardless of their government or its policies. Within weeks, more than 250 universities, including UC Irvine and California State University, and eight academic associations, condemned the boycott as a violation of academic freedom. The California regional ASA chapter, chaired by Cal State Fullerton Associate Professor Adam Golub, and its East Coast counterpart said they would not abide by the decision of their parent body. Despite the apparent checks and balances in the circles of higher academia, the whole dialogue is a slippery slope. The blatant disregard for academic integrity by the resolution’s proponents, many of whom are on faculty at prestigious universities, is the type of politically inspired pseudointellectualism that is both hypocritical and belies their claim that the boycott serves the interests of social justice and Palestinian academic freedom. It is an attempt by these
scholars on the radical left to tattoo Israel with a label of heinous contemporary evil in the form of settler colonialism and Apartheid. While scholars have the right to oppose Israeli policies toward Palestinians, and many do, they do not have the right to use their grade-granting positions of authority to impose improper paradigms on young minds in support of a dubious cause. And for this reason alone, we should be very concerned. We should encourage dialogue within the academic community based on real scholarship on the Middle East conflict that emphasizes the complexity of the competing narratives that underlie it. This dialogue should begin with those seen as the most vulnerable to BDS rhetoric: humanities faculty, students from certain minorities, and those guided by a sense of social justice. This fall, Rose Project Director Lisa Armony and ASA members opposed to the boycott will meet to explore ways to promote this type of dialogue within the discipline as well as to move the organization beyond the resolution. In addition, the Rose Project is partnering with UCI and the Schusterman Foundation to bring Prof. Mohammed Wattad as a visiting scholar in the political science department and law school. An assistant professor in Zefat College’s School of Law, a lawyer and former clerk to Israeli Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner, Wattad is an expert on identity in multi-cultural societies and has written
extensively on relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens and its external relations with surrounding Arab states. He is a critic of BDS who asserts that Israel’s powerful democracy and robust judiciary are clear contra-indicators to the lie of Israel as an Apartheid regime. And in contrast to the ASA, he argues that good faith, and honest self-criticism by both sides are the key for a true vision of peace in the Middle East, while hypocrisy, rhetoric, polemics and misrepresentation only perpetuate conflict and misunderstanding. In today’s world of short attention spans and quick fixes, the BDS movement uses false models to impose simplistic propaganda under the guise of human rights to promote a hostile agenda. This current environment makes the work of the Rose Project all the more crucial, in order that we may apply resources to promote sound and fair scholarship on OC college campuses. We appreciate your support, and please be assured that passivity in the face of the dangerous BDS movement is not an option for the Rose Council.
Jeffrey H. Margolis Co-Chair, Rose Project
James M. Weiss, MD Co-Chair, Rose Project
ROSE GRANTS AND SUBSIDIES The Rose Project provides grants and subsidies to develop Israel-focused learning opportunities and to empower OC college students and organizations to engage in positive Israel experiences and advocacy. In 2013, the Rose Project invested over $92,000 in campus and community programs:
...In 2013 the Rose Project invested over $92,000 in campus and community programs
• Grants to partner organizations Hillel,
Chabad of UCI, AEPi, Anteaters for Israel, Titans for Israel and others for Jewish life and Israel educational programs.
•
Subsidies for students to attend Israel advocacy training programs through AIPAC, Hasbara Fellowships, StandWithUs, Brand of Milk & Honey and more.
• Community programs with distinguished
speakers including Israeli Consul General David Siegel, former IDF Spokeswoman Col. Miri Eisin, & SpaceIL Founder Yariv Bash.
• Support for visiting Israeli educators in UCI’s
departments of political science and dance.
• Subsidy for an Israel Studies Speaker Series
in UCI’s Jewish Studies Program.
• Grants for academic symposia, faculty
exchanges and guest lectures that bring together Israeli and OC faculty and students.
• Support for an Jewish Agency Israel Fellow
on the UCI, Chapman and CSUF campuses.
• Scholarships for outstanding, incoming
Jewish college freshmen.
Together, we do the extraordinary.
UCI-ISRAEL RELATIONS ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT The Rose Project partners with OC universities to develop learning opportunities that increase knowledge, foster innovation and promote scholarship on Israel. These engagements contribute to a positive campus climate for Israel by building connections among local and Israeli scholars and students based on shared interests and values.
IMIT: THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY Faculty from UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Medical School were in Israel in November for the second UCI-Tel Aviv University symposium on the future of technology.
UCI and Tel Aviv University scientists and students with keynote speaker Dr. Henry Samueli at the IMIT Conference in Israel in November.
“International Medical Innovation Technology 2025” (IMIT) brought Israeli and UCI scientists together with clinicians, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and students to explore how engineering innovation and scientific advances will provide physicians with new technologies to meet clinical needs. They also discussed ways to enhance science and engineering education so that high schools and colleges can prepare students entering these fields for the rapid advances expected to take place over the next 10 years. The first UCI-TAU technology symposium, “Communications and Information Technology 2025,” convened in Irvine in October 2013. Faculty and students shared research and explored how their work will help meet the needs of the world’s rapidly growing population. The 2025 conferences are an outgrowth of UCI’s academic partnerships with Israeli universities and serve as a launching pad for joint initiatives and research collaboration. The series is cosponsored by the Rose Project.
ISRAEL STUDIES LECTURE SERIES Three renowned Israel Studies scholars addressed the campus and broader communities this year as UC Irvine’s Jewish Studies Program and the Rose Project launched a new Israel Studies lecture series. In February, Professor Liora Halperin of the University of Colorado gave the inaugural address with her talk, “Babel in Zion: Negotiating Diversity in Mandate Palestine.” She was followed in March by Professor Michael Brenner, distinguished historian in residence and director of American University’s Center for Israel Studies, who spoke to an overflow audience about changing concepts of a Jewish State from Herzl’s time to the present. The series concluded with Nina Spiegel, the Rabbi Joshua Stampfer Assistant Professor of Israel Studies, who examined the development of Hebrew culture during the
(l-r) Schusterman Artists-in-Residence Idan Cohen and Shiloh with Professors Nina Spiegel and Matthias Lehmann.
British Mandate and the dilemmas and tensions that impact contemporary Israeli society. The Israel Studies series provides education in Israeli history, culture, politics and society while supporting the growth of the Jewish Studies Program under the direction of Teller Chair Professor Matthias Lehmann. For information about Jewish Studies at UCI, visit www.humanities.uci.edu/jewishstudies/
RESIDENCY BRINGS ISRAEL TO LIFE FOR OC DANCE COMMUNITY Award-winning Israeli choreographer Idan Cohen and dancer Noa Shiloh returned to UCI this year as Schusterman Artists-in-Residence in the Department of Dance. They taught undergraduate contemporary dance classes in the winter and spring quarters and participated in a faculty collaboration that will culminate in a major community performance in May. A 2012 recipient of the UCI dance students with Noa Shiloh Israeli Ministry of Culture’s Best Young Artist Award, Cohen danced with the renowned Kibbutz Dance Company before launching a career as a choreographer. He has taught and toured extensively and his work is performed on stages worldwide. Shiloh has performed with Israel’s major dance companies and has taught in Europe and the US. The unusual decision to bring the artists back for a second year was due to the positive
impact of their Spring 2013 residency. Cohen and Shiloh found UCI students very receptive to their teaching and wanted to work more extensively with them, while students were eager to learn the style and technique that distinguish Israeli dance from other forms. As a result of the residency, several UCI students are planning auditions for Israeli dance companies, which they had not considered prior to working with Cohen and Shiloh. Shiloh also taught master classes in the community, including two classes each at the Orange County School of the Arts and The Wooden Floor, which provides dance education to underserved youth. The collaboration at UCI, “The Swan Lake Fusion Project,” juxtaposes Cohen’s original, contemporary interpretation of Swan Lake with a more traditional version staged by UCI faculty choreographers Tong Wang and Diane Diefenderfer. The performance will take place on Wed., May 28 at 7pm in the Myers Theatre on the Samueli Jewish Campus, 1 Federation Way, Irvine. The Schusterman Artist-in-Residence program at UCI is a partnership between UCI, the Rose Project and the Israel Institute.
JFFS Chair Debbie Margolis(l) and Rose Project Co-Chair Jeff Margolis(r) with Col. Miri Eisin at a community presentation in October sponsored by the Rose Project & Temple Beth El of South Orange County.
The Rose Project honored UCI Chancellor Michael Drake for his work to improve the campus climate. Pictured l-r: JFFS CEO Shalom Elcott; Rose Council members Doug Freeman and Dr. Jim Weiss; Chancellor Drake; Israeli Consul Gen. David Siegel; Drs. Susan and Henry Samueli, UCI Special Asst. to the Chancellor Larry Gold.
UCI Artist-in-Residence Noa Shiloh taught a master class at the OC School or the Arts in February.
The Rose Project partnered with Hillel Foundation of OC to send a students from three campuses to the AIPAC National Policy Conference in Washington DC in March.
Partners on Campus SAMUELI JEWISH CAMPUS • 1 FEDERATION WAY, SUITE 210, IRVINE CA 92603
(949) 435-3484 • info@jffs.org • www.JewishOC.ORG