The Making of History /An ivory tower view of Israel

Last week, a team of researchers at Brandeis University released some unexpected findings about Israel's place in the curricula of American institutions of higher learning. It emerges that in the past three years, there has been a dramatic growth - of 69 percent - in the number of courses that focus on Israel. Together, the more than 300 colleges and universities surveyed in the study offer over 1,400 courses related in some way to Israel, including over 500 courses that focus specifically on the country. All told, these institutions have approximately three million students, of whom some 250,000 are Jews.

Furthermore, the researchers found a conspicuous increase in the number of courses related to Israel even among those institutions where relatively few Jews are enrolled. Such courses have also proliferated at highly prestigious American universities such as Harvard (from two courses to six), Princeton (from one course to five) and Yale (from three to six).

The scholars who conducted the study, which was itself funded by the Schusterman Family Foundation, note with special satisfaction that most of the courses about Israel do not deal with its political situation, but rather with Israeli culture, including literature, music, cinema and cuisine. So this is an Israel without Palestinians - as many Israelis, as well as many American Jews, would like it to be.