Manhattanville College Professor Discusses Manhattanville's Mission in Relation to Ferguson and Gaza

By Alexandra Espinal

James Jones, professor of the African Studies and World Religions departments, is coordinating an event that will discuss how Manhattanville students can relate to and respond to the violence taking place in Gaza and Ferguson, Missouri.

“We’re trying to encourage our students to think about education in light of what is going on in the world and to think about education in light of how to tackle these problems,” said Jones. The event will focus on relating the conflicts in Gaza and Ferguson to Manhattanville’s mission statement, “to educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community”.

Jones hopes that the event will challenge a younger generation to think critically about these tragedies and what role they can play in them. “In my opinion, the ‘older leadership’ is failing us,” he said. “When we look at Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, and Ferguson we see that the older people don’t seem to be serving the public very well.”

Co-sponsored by the First Year Program, the occasion will include a panel of speakers that will share personal experiences, engage the audience, and weight in on the events happening in Gaza and Ferguson. The panel will include Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, who has spoken at Manhattanville for the past three years about his book, “I Shall Not Hate.” Dr. Abuelaish, a Gaza native, lost three daughters when an Israeli tank shelled his house in 2009. In his book he talks about how he overcame this tragedy. Other panelists include the former Chief of Police in Hartford, Conn., who will discuss the events happening in Ferguson, MO, from a police officer’s perspective, and Jones himself.

For Jones, the conflicts in Gaza and Ferguson hit very close to home. “I have a personal connection to both of these places,” he said. “I have friends who live in both Israel and Palestine and I visited Israel and the West Bank. We have alumni who live in Israel and Palestine. I feel personally connected to the tragedy in Gaza. I also feel personally connected to the tragedy in Ferguson for two reasons. First, I’m African-American. Second, in 1997 my son, Malik Jones, was killed by a police officer in New Haven, Connecticut under similar circumstances. These are issues that are very close to me conceptually and academically as well because I teach about the Middle East, race, and race relations.”

The event will be followed by an ice cream social. “If it’s like any of the other events that we’ve sponsored in the previous years, it will be a very lively, enlightening, engaging event,” said Jones.