The annual Darom Adom festival in Israel’s South celebrates the early-spring blossoming of red anemones across fields and forests. The festival, this year returning in scaled-down form after the depredations of October 7 as well as a rain-poor winter, and renamed Darom Balev, draws hope and inspiration from the vibrant blooms (now officially Israel’s national flower) known in Hebrew as kalaniyot.
Drawing on this phenomenon of regrowth and renewal, a new initiative called Kalaniyot, founded by a group of about 60 professors at MIT, is bringing outstanding Israeli academics to U.S. campuses as research fellows. The goal: to protect and further academic and scientific collaboration between the United States and Israel.
It’s no secret that it has been a punishing year and a half for Jewish students and faculty at American universities. Just two weeks ago, CUNY passed a BDS resolution, which followed a successful BDS vote at Rutgers in December, while a Jewish professor at Columbia, Avi Friedman, resigned last week due to “inexcusable and systemic” anti-Israel bias on campus.
But as the Trump administration begins cracking down on out-of-control pro-Hamas campus protests – promising to deport foreign-born student inciters and launching a new investigation into antisemitism at five major U.S. universities – Kalaniyot’s founders are working not only to offer much-needed opportunities for globally maligned Israeli researchers, but to quietly shape a stronger, more supportive Jewish and Israeli community on campus.
“At MIT we have over 100 community members (undergraduate, graduate students, postdocs, faculty and staff) attending weekly lunches where we both build support networks, forge long-lasting friendships, and discuss campus challenges and ways to address them,” said Ernest Fraenkel, a professor of health sciences and technology and co-founder of MIT-Kalaniyot. MIT’s initiative has so-far been embraced by at least two other American universities, Dartmouth and University of Pennsylvania, which have launched their own chapters under the auspices of a new umbrella organization, the Kalaniyot Foundation.
“Kalaniyot was conceptualized in the aftermath of October 7th when we felt the acute needs for community and concern about the future of U.S.-Israel academic partnerships,” explained Or Hen, a professor of physics and co-founder with Fraenkel of MIT-Kalaniyot. The hope is that these fellowships will “enrich the campus with the well-known spirit of entrepreneurship and out-of-the-box creativity of Israeli researchers.”
Five Israeli postdoctoral fellows have already arrived at MIT, which is also accepting applications for sabbatical scholars, and the Association of University Heads, Israel (VERA) has enthusiastically endorsed the initiative. “At a time when collaborations with Israeli academics are becoming increasingly fragile, the Kalaniyot program stands as a testament to the enduring strength of partnerships based on shared knowledge and mutual respect,” wrote Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, VERA’s chair and president of Ben-Gurion University in a letter to the program’s founders.
Not only Ph.D.-holders in the hard sciences may apply to the program – applicants for Kalaniyot’s first round of fellowship grants included many from non-STEM fields, including the humanities. They are selected, according to the program’s founders, based on both “academic excellence and community spirit,” the latter a euphemism for public involvement and advocacy on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.
Participants receive a stipend toward their living expenses, with funding coming from individual donors and operations supported by MIT, Chen says.
The faculty behind MIT-Kalaniyot consists mostly of Jewish Americans, with some Israelis “and a few allies,” Fraenkel says. Chabad and Hillel chapters on campus have also lent their support to the inaugural program.
Are the organizers concerned about the safety and comfort level of visiting Israelis on campus while hostility toward all things connected with the Jewish State remains high? “The leadership of the committed faculty is the key to ensuring that whatever comes our way is properly and promptly addressed,” is all Fraenkel would tell us.
