On “Setting the Facts Straight”

On Nov. 17, Israeli activist and author Noa Tishby held an event in Johnson Chapel. Tishby came at the invitation of Amherst for Israel (AMI), and her event was titled “Israel and Antisemitism: Setting the Facts Straight.” In the supposed service of this mission, Tishby spent the event answering questions from Amherst students. Strangely, however, Tishby did not answer those questions in the traditional manner. Rather than being permitted to answer questions themselves during the event, students were required to submit their questions online before the event began. These questions were subjected to some unexplained screening process, and the selected few were read out by the event’s moderator, AMI co-founder Cal Wider ’28. 

I have an issue with this. My issue, however, has nothing to do with AMI’s invitation of Noa Tishby. I write this article to express no particular views on the war in Gaza. And though there might have been more thoughtful voices that AMI could have chosen to invite, I will spend this article neither second-guessing AMI’s choice of speaker nor their general right to invite speakers. The likely fact that the majority of students on this campus disagree with these speakers is not a reason to prevent them from coming. Rather, I believe it’s actually a reason for them to come. 

This campus is, I believe, sorely lacking in substantive political discourse, in no small part due to the fact that the vast majority of our numbers hold, broadly speaking, very similar political opinions. In The Student’s recently published First-Year Survey, a mere 9% of first-year students identified as conservative. This kind of liberal echo-chamber is, I believe, harmful to our education. Seeking out conservative voices helps with that problem. 

If this is our reason for inviting conservative speakers (and I believe it should be; these speakers do not, obviously, have some kind of “natural right” to get paid to speak at Amherst), our invitations should be contingent on our belief that the speakers will contribute to our education — that their voices will productively contribute to campus discourse. 

Inviting someone like Noa Tishby might very well further this goal. The college seems to believe that this is exactly what was accomplished in this invitation, as evidenced by the prefatory words of Associate Dean of Students for Equity and Engagement Crystal Norwood. If Noa Tishby had come to campus and thoughtfully engaged with the students she was there to educate, I would have wholeheartedly endorsed such an event. 

But that isn’t what happened. Instead, she refused to answer our questions. She refused to authentically confront disagreement. She hid behind the protective shield of a moderator sympathetic to her beliefs. And so, instead of contributing positively to our education, inviting Noa Tishby to campus contributed quite negatively to it. It taught us that disagreement is something to be afraid of, and that we should, like her, seek protection from the voices of those with whom we disagree. That we should retreat to our eco-chambers, to our MSNBC and our Fox News. To our friendly algorithms. 

We need conservative speakers. But we don’t need conservative speakers who are too afraid of disagreement that they won’t answer our questions. 

And the same, of course, goes for speakers on the left. When we invite speakers like Mohammed el-Kurd, who came to campus in November 2023 and who similarly answered student questions only through the shield of a moderator, we must too require that they deal with our opinions. Yes, it might ultimately be the case that some students will ask questions that will make the room uncomfortable; it might be the case that these questions will in some respects degrade the quality of the conversation, that they will veer the conversation in directions that an experienced moderator would not otherwise choose to go; it might be the case that the informational value of the event might drop. But learning to deal with discomfort is important; learning to ask the right questions is important; and, if you need a particular piece of information that badly, Frost Library is a great place to go. 

I accept that there will need to be exceptions. Like, for example, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, whose Oct. 2023 event included pre-screened questions. There is, at the end of the day, only one Governor of Massachusetts, and if the Governor’s condition to come speak at Amherst is that questions be pre-screened, I understand that the college is in no position to negotiate (though I do believe it would have been more in the spirit of the event, titled “Democracy and the Greater Good,” if our governor had exhibited a tad less fear for what a young constituent might have to ask her). 

But there were, I will venture, at least a few potential replacements for Noa Tishby. She is, undoubtedly, a prominent pro-Israeli voice, but she is not the only prominent pro-Israeli voice. America, as we may notice, suffers from no dearth of public figures willing to profess their affection for Israel. If Tishby refused to field questions, AMI could and should have pivoted.

My message in this article is a general one, both to Amherst’s administration and to students who plan on hosting future events. It is not my intention to single out the group responsible for Tishby’s event — this kind of event has happened before, and I have no doubt it will happen again. Nevertheless, I do feel the need to end with a particular message to the leaders of AMI: If you feel that we have played fast and loose with “the facts” at this college, please, set us straight. But, if you wish to be taken seriously in your endeavor, I would suggest that you give us the chance to respond. For a “fact” that cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny is not, after all, really a fact.