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Statewide Seminar for Student Activists | The Faculty of Law

Statewide Seminar for Student Activists

Statewide Seminar for Student Activists, Tel Hai, April 23-24, 2010
The Campus-Community Partnership's statewide seminar took place this year in Israel's far north, at Tel-Hai College. The seminar brought together students from diverse backgrounds, studying at institutions of higher education from across the country, for two days of intense workshops aimed at providing knowledge and tools for social activism.
 
The seminar was preceded by months of joint planning by several groups. The group leading the seminar was the Tapuach student group at Tel Hai College, which was formed during the Partnership's statewide student seminar in 2009. Together with Tapuach, other student organizations from campuses across the country joined the planning process, forming a truly statewide steering committee.
 
For the invitation in Hebrew and Arabic, press here.
For the detailed program in Hebrew, press here.
 
Over 300 students attended the seminar, where they could choose between dozens of workshops on such topics as Jewish-Arab relations, feminism, human rights, militarism, social change, education, gender, and more. In addition, students could attend two study tours, panels on pressing social issues, and a variety of documentary films. This year the seminar also featured a fair-trade market with locally made products from the Galilee, where students could learn more about fair-trade in Israel.
 
On Friday evening following a communal dinner, students enjoyed many social activities, beginning with small group discussions on personal issues, and performances by Kalkidan, an Ethiopian hip hop artist, and Arabiat, a Palestinian-Israeli duo from Acre.
 
Student responses to this year's seminar were enthusiastic, and many told us that it is a major inspirational event. In their feedback forms, many students expressed desire for a longer, three day seminar and for more meetings throughout the year for attendees to process what they had experienced. They noted that in these difficult times, the seminar provided a unique opportunity for optimism.
 
With the completion of yet another successful seminar, we hope that this tradition of an annual gathering will become a milestone in the students' journey of social engagement, constitute a space for thought, discussion, and impetus towards action. Currently, the seminar is a singular event, particularly in its scope, for student activists form different organizations from across the country. Therefore it presents a unique opportunity for creating an activist student discourse, and for encouraging the integration of the triangle – students, academia, and civil society.