WASHINGTON (JTA)—

Just as college students were finishing their winter exams, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg selected a partnership of The Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University to build a campus on Roosevelt Island that will become a global center for technological talent and entrepreneurship. Few people know that before these universities formalized collaboration on today’s most cutting-edge engineering and scientific work, the Hillels at each of the institutions collaborated through networks of entrepreneurial students to advance common interests that spanned Jewish, social and business realms.

In this and many other respects, our students are ahead of us. In developing direct student-to-student ties, they have chosen the most direct way to connect with Israel via their Israeli peers. On more than 75 campuses nationwide, students are connected directly with Israel Fellows and MASA peer interns (trained by the Jewish Agency and Hillel) who encourage them to participate in scores of student Israel initiatives that speak to diverse political, cultural, educational and social interests. Today, tens of thousands of college students are now proactively defining their relationship with Israel in the most meaningful and intimate ways and not merely embracing a slogan, ideology or myth.

This picture is much different than the one often presented by campus critics and commentators. As an example, Tom Friedman of The New York Times recently presented a distorted picture of students’ relationships to Israel. He claimed students at leading universities would “boycott” appearances by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The immediate reaction this produced proved him wrong: Three dozen mainstream student leaders from the University of Wisconsin responded by signing a public statement of support of the U.S.- Israel relationship—and sent it to Friedman—and a group of Jewish student leaders invited Netanyahu to speak on campus.

This spring semester, many students will return to the 22 North American campuses that were energized in the fall by Hillel’s public “Talk Israel” discussions, held in 20-by-20 tents in the hearts of their campuses. “Talk Israel” engaged more than 4,000 Jewish and non-Jewish students, 55 percent of whom were not affiliated with Hillel. The event demonstrated the viability and self-confidence of Jewish students to “take back” the campus from polarizing voices by providing facilitated forums for civil discourse. “Talk Israel” will launch this spring on a host of other campuses.

There are pernicious efforts to boycott Israeli speakers, goods and even academics on college campuses that were highlighted at a national conference on the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite a decade of efforts, the BDS movement has failed to make inroads on any of the campuses visited by its supporters.

When I visit campuses, it is not surprising that Jewish and non- Jewish students ask how they can visit or return to Israel now that their schools have dropped restrictive study abroad measures and are expanding academic ties. This is good news. Jewish students today see Israel, warts and all, as valuable and relevant to their lives. It is encouraging to see universities building new academic bridges in an effort to catch up with their students’ already connected imaginations and passions. .