Welcome to the commune podcast.

My name is Jeff Krasno.

So this show is patently not a news program.

I follow current events assiduously, but I am simply not set up from an infrastructure perspective

here to cover the ever-changing ground conditions of politics.

With that proviso, what is happening at Columbia University right now hits so close to home that I think I may have

some contribution here. So I went to Columbia. I met my wife Skyler in Art Humanities class in

the fall of 1988 at Columbia. My daughter Phoebe goes to Barnard and currently lives on 112th Street in

Amsterdam. And my mother, Jean Krasno, is an adjunct professor at Columbia right now teaching

a course in peacekeeping. So in her seminar, there are two Israeli students and one

Palestinian student, all of whom are extremely active in their respective communities on campus.

And one of her students, Mosin Madawi, was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and is the leader of the Free Palestine

movement on campus.

So while the rhetoric on the sidewalk and on the Butler Library lawn that we see in news clips

is intense and often odious, the conversation is totally different in my mother's classroom.

She has succeeded in earning the trust of both sides and creating a container of safety and

security where both Israelis and Palestinians feel seen and heard.

So I recently hosted Mosin for dinner, and we discussed the possibility of having conversations here on the podcast between him and Israelis with the goal of forging a path forward.

So we're talking about how that might be structured.

But what is happening in my mother's classroom really epitomizes the best aspects of our institutions of higher learning.

Passionate people with diverging ideas, learning and debating in a safe environment.

And I believe that it is this kind of dialogue that we should be advocates for at our universities.

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