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| Picture of the “Wailing Wall” To the extreme right is tower of the Al Aqsa mosque |
I have just completed a two-week visit to Israel. When it became ever so likely
that I would make this trip, I had coined a mantra to underscore its essence to
both my career and faith. The words I used were: two birds, one stone. By this,
I was expressing a resolve to kill two birds using a single stone in the course
of my visit. The major reason I was in Israel was to attend the AGORA (the
Greek word for an open place of assembly), a yearly summer workshop program that
brings together doctoral students from up to ten member institutions of the
Association of Transnational Law Schools (ATLAS). This year’s attendees
included students from the University of Melbourne, London School of Economics,
Osgoode, Canada, National University of Singapore, Universidad Deusto in
Bilbao, Spain, New York University, University of Montreal, Bucerius University
in Hamburg and the host institution, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv. At the AGORA, the first of which was hosted at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2008,
participating students discussed the theoretical and methodological challenges of their
research. They also shared their work with peers from the other participating
Law Schools and got helpful feedback. (A more complete
account of the history and objectives of the AGORA could be found in Philip G
Bevans and John S Mckay, “The Association of Transnational Law Schools’ Agora:
An Experiment in Graduate Legal Pedagogy” (2009) 10 (07) German Law Journal
929). The second reason for making the
trip was mine entirely. But that notwithstanding, it had providentially been
incorporated into the social aspects of the AGORA program. I had to see
Jerusalem, the Holy City and perhaps the most important historical site for all
the Abrahamic religions, including Christianity to which I subscribe. The 2012
AGORA turned out to be a huge success. What Professor Oren Perez and his team
served up was extraordinary and matches my earlier experience of the program at
New York University in the summer of 2010. The most significant part of the
doctoral project, as programs like the AGORA show, might be completing research
and writing up a dissertation. Yet it is not the only one. As important as the
dissertation is as a major goal, it still has to go hand in hand with other
career-building experiences like creating a community of peers with whom one
can be in scholarly conversation. Networking is a huge part of developing an
academic career and the earlier one starts is often the better. What AGORA
achieves in one brush-stroke is to translate this goal into an achievement for
its participants. They could learn at the feet of experienced faculty from the
host institutions and elsewhere while making friends with peers that could help
their academic developments going forward. On all these fronts, the 2012 AGORA more
than delivered the expectations of its attendees. But if the AGORA in Tel Aviv
was great, the Jerusalem experience put the icing on the cake of my Israeli
adventure. Not only from a religious context was this a reality, it was more so
in shedding light on the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which one
had hitherto only observed from a safe distance. I came away with many
impressions. The representation of the conflict in the media is often far
removed from actual on-ground situation. Here I recall that some worried
friends were concerned for my safety and a few in fact tried to talk me out of
making the trip. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself had I given in to those
concerns that turned out a little far-fetched. Though there are hardliners at
both ends of the conflict, my sense is that they are fewer in number than
others who have come to the realization that sustainable peace is more in the
interest of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. I also found out how come Jerusalem
is very central to the resolution or non-resolution of this conflict. As Jews
prayed at the Western Wall which was recaptured from Arabs following the 1967 six-day
war, just across from it stood the Al Aqsa mosque which sits comfortably on the
Temple Mount. Jews and Moslems lay equal claims to this site as of strong
historical and religious significance. To the Jews, the Wailing Wall is remnant
of the second temple erected after the first one built by King Solomon was
destroyed. On their part, Moslems claim the Temple Mount as the place from
which Prophet Mohammed took off to heaven. Though I was told this is not the real
cause of persisting disagreements on both sides, the challenge of resolving
looked distinctly huge from a neutral perspective.
