Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

Peres at NYU, Courtesy of MTV

Adozen men wearing black suits and secret service earpieces loitered next to the front door of a New York University lecture hall. A pack of gum with Hebrew lettering on it lay on a desktop next to a camcorder stand.

Clearly there was something out of the ordinary going on in Professor Caroleen Marji’s International Politics of the Middle East class.

Nonetheless, the 45 or so undergrads enrolled in the seminar seemed taken aback when, in their professor’s place, Israeli vice premier Shimon Peres strode up to the lectern last Thursday with an MTV microphone clipped to his lapel.

By consenting to appear on the MTV show “Stand-In,” Peres has joined an august list of celebrities-turned-surprise-substitute-professor. Goth-rocker Marilyn Manson appeared on the show to teach a philosophy class, country singer Ashley Judd did a lesson on HIV awareness, hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg coached the University of South Carolina’s football team for a day and Senator John McCain lectured Naval Academy cadets on military policy.

“I was so surprised that I had tears in my eyes,” said Sharon Gilon, an NYU junior born in Israel and raised in Massachusetts. She described Peres as “kind of a celebrity.”

Peres spoke with optimism about Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. “This is the first time the Palestinian people have ever had a piece of land to govern themselves,” he said.

In response to questions from students about Israel’s separation fence, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner compared the barrier between Israel and Palestine to the Berlin Wall.

“When the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall came down,” he said. “When the peace is warm between Israel and Palestine, we will take down the wall.”

Though many of the students called on by Peres were critical of Israeli military policies, the discussion proceeded without incident.

After the 82-year-old statesman and his guards shuffled their way out of the crowded hall, Marji returned to her place at the front of the class. A hive of students gathered around her to dissect the various points established in the previous hour’s made-for-television discussion.

“He always sticks to that old modern idea of the East and West being separate,” said teaching assistant Ayda Erbal, a doctoral candidate from Istanbul.

“People don’t talk enough about the divisions within Israel,” Marji said. “I would have asked about those ideological polarizations.”

In the interest of equal time, the show has asked Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to appear. And according to one MTV executive, “He’s definitely considering it.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.