There have not been any encampments established at Duke as seen on other campuses, and any anti-Israel protest has been tame and lacks significant support. Overall, the Duke administration has done a great job of shutting down unlawful protests.

A minor walkout during the Duke commencement speech by Jerry Seinfeld garnered significant media attention, even though it shouldn’t have. It was blown way out of proportion and only had 40–50 students walk out compared to over 7,000 in the stands. 

The Jewish community at Duke is one of the strongest I have ever seen at a college campus, and this is evident by our fundraising of hundreds of thousands of dollars for Chabad, Hillel, and our own student-led trip to Israel. The Duke Chabad and Students Supporting Israel (SSI) communities have an active WhatsApp chat and a thriving community that supports one another at all times.

Support for any community hasn’t particularly changed over the past few months, and the university is taking a neutral stance on the issue. I’ve sent this to Yoni, but I think one thing the Duke administration did well was turn the passionate feelings from both sides into intellectual and academic discussion.

We've had speakers ranging from former Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer to former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. In my opinion, it’s a smart way to push students to veer away from student-run protests into actually engaging in intellectual discourse to learn from those who are at the forefront of the conflict.

The WJC has helped me in getting into contact with the right people for different initiatives I've taken upon, including organizing the Duke student trip to Israel, and also organizing a meeting between the WJC and the Japanese Ambassador to the US, which I hope is just the beginning of a lasting connection.