Motivation and Background

For years now I have found it difficult to read or listen to news since doing this often disturbed me so deeply that I became unproductive and negative in ways that did not help anybody or anything.

Nevertheless, I maintained a connection, but tried to do so in a way that supported something positive. For me "something positive" means mathematics, students, my family and friends or various writings or even design/invention and fabrication.

I have largely maintained a silence on the issues that disturb me most -- typically having to do with Palestine or other deep disturbances to our illusions of peace and progress.

But this morning, after writing my thoughts in a private blog, I looked at truthdig.com and read an article by one of my favorite writers, Chris Hedges. I don't agree with everything Chris writes, but what good would such a writer be who only believed uniformly like me?

That article by Chris Hedges moved me to break my silence.

I have long been a fan of people like Avnery and Hedges who were for peace and spoke the truth as they saw it. Of course it wasn't always so. When I was young, I naively counted myself as an extreme Zionist and indulged in ugly, ignorant bigotry towards all "enemies of Israel". I should make it clear that I have never been to Israel, though I do have many friends who are from Israel, and many other friends and relatives have visited Israel. And the orthodox would not consider me to have any Jewish relevance. My genes that are Jewish are from my mother's father's side, so I don't have the right mitochondria, according to the truly orthodox.

My attention to the middle east is not unrelated to my parents' innovating and peacemaking instincts. My mother, as a young unmarried nurse went to Africa in 1945 and started a nursing school. After many adventures and nearly fatal experiences with disease, she came back to get more schooling and met and married my dad. At that point, she decided to continue her teaching career in the US. My father was the kind of peacemaking, forward thinking, professor of music that made him very popular with students and very unpopular with some school administrators in the private schools he in which he worked. Together, my parents provided a foundation of independence and freedom and the encouragement to pursue creative excellence. Because of them, I have an instinctive understanding that freedom forms the foundation for innovation and creativity.

And it is the lack of freedom in Gaza that moved me to action.

What I am doing about it

I have decided that I will work to help nucleate a cooperative of active academics and entrepreneurs helping students from desperate circumstances to get training and education. For those from places as hopeless (for the Palestinian) as Palestine, we will support efforts of the students to stay in our countries after school. Currently, this is made very difficult by Israel's refusal to allow many students exit visas. But there are organizations such as Gisha in Israel that are fighting for these and other rights. The tangible ways I will start are simple. First, I will begin by finding students in places like the West Bank and Gaza, who are interested in studying mathematics with me. Second, I will set up a private blog (members only, to eliminate spam) where interested mentors and sponsors of students can get and share information. Finally, I will do what I can to support and advertise efforts like Gisha and Truthdig.

What we can each do by ourselves is rather limited. But as we band together, leverage an economy of growing scale and use the visibility that quietly emerges from positive, collective action, we will be able to have a super-linear impact.

What you can do

Email me and ask to be put on the blog/email list, explaining why you want to be on the list and who you are (if I don't already know you). Let me know how you want to help with the effort when you ask to be added. We will need sponsors and mentors as well as help moderating and maintaining the blog. The blog will be hosted at wordpress, but you can get there by going here http://helpthestudents.org.

Cheers, Kevin

PS: Since this effort is for people who want to do something to help, rather than just talk about it, I really don't expect spam and flaming posts to be a problem. The care with how members are added, together with rapid response to blog abuse should eliminate problems quite efficiently. As this grows, those who take an administrative role will grow; this will be a cooperative of research and innovation active individuals, not a top down affair.