Frank Tipton taught students the extensive historical context behind the Israel-Palestine conflict. Most students felt his content was introductory and effective.
Members of the Andover community came together in the Cochran Chapel to receive a brief introduction to the history of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. Entitled “Israel-Palestine 101,” the lecture was presented by Frank Tipton, an educator in Middle Eastern studies and former Phillips Academy Instructor in History and Cluster Dean. Tipton provided fundamental historical context about the conflict while refuting beliefs of anti-Arab sentiments and antisemitism.
Throughout the presentation, Tipton utilized an array of poems, maps, documents, and speeches to provide an overview of both perspectives of the conflict throughout its history. Tipton also highlighted how misguided assumptions and personal biases may further inhibit open conversations to better understand the topic.
“The glorification of violence is not helpful. Prejudice, dehumanization, and hate [are] not helpful. Offering some kind of comparison that offers some implicit value judgment to the pain one person has as opposed to the pain that someone else has is not helpful. Pain is pain,” said Tipton.
Tipton continued, “Indifference is also not helpful. I don’t mean that we need to be thinking about Israel and Palestine 24/7. I do mean that when our paths cross those who are involved in the conflict, when our circumstances find ourselves in discourse, indifference sends a very powerful and negative message… Let’s build hope. Let’s come together and build hope… When we think about how we keep moving, when we think about how we continue to learn, when we think about how we continue to support, we will continue to think about how we build hope.”
Dr. Merrilee Mardon, Deputy Head of School and one of the event organizers, described the process behind arranging the lecture. Mardon emphasized the involvement of student groups and thoughtfulness behind the planning of the event.
“The planning process involved many adults and students. On the student side — Nor and Ryan, and the boards of the MSA [Muslim Student Association], JSU [Jewish Student Union] and SWANA [South West Asian/North African Society] — were essential partners. [It] required us to pay attention to the evolving war in Gaza, to events on college campuses and in communities throughout the world, and — most importantly — to the experiences and needs of our students. We felt a great responsibility to the community to find and provide resources that would provide reliable and comprehensive information,” wrote Mardon in an email to The Phillipian.
Nafi Diagne ’26 noted that while the presentation successfully provided a wide overview of the conflict given the time constraints, there could have been more space for further questions and connections between past and present.
“[Tipton] did a pretty good job of being conscious of both sides: affected people’s feelings and pain. It would have been a bit more helpful to know some of the in-betweens of the conflict, like the tensions that built up and how the people felt. He went over big details. There were definitely some points omitted in between, [and] some undertones in certain spaces. The presentation wasn’t completely impartial, but if you know nothing about it, it gives some big starting points to learn from and know the context of what’s going on,” said Diagne.
Myca Bishop ’25 highlighted how the presentation’s “wormhole” breaks, opportunities for students to ask clarifying questions, were helpful in allowing students to discuss the content of the presentation. Bishop also commented on how the presentation emphasized the importance of empathy and compassion in the conversations about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and to be wary of misinformation and untrustworthy sources.
“The ‘wormholes’ that were in between the different segments were important. It’s something we don’t really have during our regular [All-School Meetings] or class meetings and it definitely helped engage everyone in attendance, because you could at least speak to your peers about what they thought about what was being presented. I think what [students] took away is the need to be compassionate and have empathy, especially when there are so many people affected by the conflict, and always to be critical of sources because of how information is spread either on social media or through different news outlets. Always just take whatever is being presented to you with a grain of salt and always make sure that your sources are credible,” said Bishop.
Similarly, Isa Matloff ’24 commented on how the presentation provided a good basis for students who had little to no background information about the conflict prior to the presentation. In particular, Matloff described her surprise at students’ lack of knowledge about the topic at hand, and voiced hopes that students would continue to look for information and have conversations respectfully about the conflict.
“Overall, I really appreciated the presentation as a whole: it was really great for students with zero basic knowledge. Something that sort of shocked me, as someone who has grown up with a lot of this information and been in spaces discussing this conflict and information, is just how little people know. It’s a little bit of a culture shock and I think one of the main moments tonight where I saw that was[when] Mr. Tipton mentioned that the entire area of the Levant, which is this part of the Middle East, is about the size of New Jersey. Going into it with Mr. Tipton’s four main goals talking about how we can offer basic respect and how we can offer some basic levels of human decency was a really important way to frame it… I’m really hoping people will continue to look for information and continue to look for good information,” said Matloff.
