The National Black Empowerment Council and a series of Israeli universities are signing agreements to establish new exchange programs and other ventures with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a move that runs in sharp contrast to the overall anti-Israel sentiment at many elite colleges.
The first agreements, signed between the NBEC and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, were finalized as part of an NBEC delegation trip to Israel earlier this year that included leaders and staff from several HBCUs. Additional agreements are in the works with Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa.
The NBEC is a national network of Black leaders whose ranks include senior political and business figures, founded by Darius Jones, a former senior AIPAC official. Its programming includes trips to Israel for network members.
“We have a lot of members in our organization who are presidents of HBCUs and trustees at HBCUs,” Jones told Jewish Insider last week. ”As a way to really improve educational offers that can be provided for some of these top African American students, give them more exposure about the global situation, we wanted to make a connection with a strong ally in both our country and our African American community here in the United States — Israel.”
New programs to be facilitated under the agreement will include exchange programs for HBCU students to study in Israel for a summer or a semester, faculty exchange opportunities, collaborative research projects and potential opportunities for Ethiopian Israelis to visit HBCUs.
“We’re trying to create a multigenerational contingent of leaders within the African American community who are going and doing things that uplift our community, but who also see support for the Jewish community and support for Israel as a normative value amongst this new generation of Black leaders that are matriculating and that are going to be the leaders in our country,” Jones said.
Amid the turmoil and social division in the United States, Jones said he believes that forging bonds between the Black and Jewish communities can help restore the social fabric. He added that NBEC members also support pro-Israel policies through advocacy and in some cases, their positions in elected office.
The study-abroad programs could begin as soon as this summer, and HBCU leaders who went on the NBEC trip earlier this year — from institutions including Howard University, Florida A&M, Benedict College, Southern University System and Texas Southern University — are already beginning to identify students who may participate and promote the programs to their peers.
For Israel, Jones continued, connecting the country with the next generation of Black American leaders will help combat efforts to delegitimize Israel on the international stage.
And for Ethiopian Jews, exchange programs would allow them to spend time in a community “with people who look like them in another part of the world, who are successfully navigating what it’s like to be a minority.”
He said that he saw the potential of such a relationship while visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance center in Jerusalem with the NBEC delegation earlier this year: “We ran into a delegation of students who were touring the museum, and the overwhelming majority of the group were Ethiopian students. And when they saw this group of Black folks walking in, suited, looking like the leaders that we are, it was radiant, just how their eyes lit up.”
Jones argued that Ethiopian Israelis could also be strong ambassadors to convey Israel’s cultural diversity to Americans.
Jones said that HBCUs largely have not been plagued by the same spate of disruptive anti-Israel protests seen at many elite institutions across the nation.
“These anti-Israel forces try to show up on these Black campuses and they try to conflate the circumstances of Palestinians with the circumstances of African Americans here in the United States, and more often than not, these students know enough about their own history to be able to point out the very stark differences,” Jones explained. “[They] are less likely to be taken in by that.”
Jones argued that the posture of other elite institutions toward Israel provides a “strategic opportunity” for Israel and Israeli universities to engage with institutions that produce leading voices in the Black community.