The vital importance of an open ear and a desire to listen

My name is Tim Mellman. You may recognize my name from the bottom of the newsletter you received at 7 a.m. this morning. But outside of my role in sharing the news with you all, I’ve often been a witness of and participant in major campus events. Name a politically contentious issue on campus over the past two years, and I was probably involved with it in one way or another.

Clearly, I am steadfast in my beliefs. But perhaps my strongest belief is the importance of listening to people with whom you disagree. 

On Monday, Sept. 23, I attended a guest speaker event titled “The Palestine Taboo: Race, Islamophobia, and Free Speech,” held by expert law professor Sahar Aziz. Professor Aziz and I have some fundamental disagreements, and I knew that coming into the talk. But I went anyway, wrapping up my evening with a 35-minute, nuanced, one-on-one conversation with her. I wanted to hear what she had to say; I believe you can only be strong in your opinion when that opinion is as informed as possible.

A friend of mine asked how I managed to have such a conversation with someone who fundamentally disagrees with me on so many things. My answer is experience. I was raised in a liberal neighborhood with a conservative father. Listening to different perspectives is as normal to me as a Friday night family dinner (plus, weekly Shabbat debates over politics meant the two often went hand in hand).

The normalization of different perspectives has defined my time at WashU. In my first year, I attended both College Democrat and College Republican general member meetings. Toward the end of the year, when Student Union (SU) Treasury voted against funding a conservative economist to speak on campus, I appealed the decision to SU Constitutional Council despite my personal liberal leanings. They ruled in my favor, stating that the decision had been made with political bias and in violation of the SU Constitution’s Equality Clause.

Last year, following Oct. 7, I made an effort to subscribe to as varied of news sources as possible — from a right-wing Israeli WhatsApp channel that is translated from Hebrew into English, to the Jerusalem Post, to Al Jazeera, to a Hamas-aligned Telegram channel that celebrated the “resistance” — so I could be as informed as possible about all perspectives of the conflict.

On campus, I attended as many pro-Palestine protests (and anti-Israel protests — I believe there is a distinct difference in rhetoric between the two) as I could. If I hadn’t made this decision early on, I would have missed the Muslim Student Association’s December memorial event for Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza. Organizers discouraged participants from saying chants that are harmful to many in the Jewish community, and the event centered around powerful personal stories from Palestinians.

When the StudLife article on the event was published, I wrote about my appreciation for the event on social media. It was the first time I felt comfortable standing on the same side of the sidewalk as the organizers at one of these events, and I have always maintained that it was an incredibly powerful show of mourning and desire for peace. And I would have missed it if I hadn’t made the conscious decision to always attend and listen.

And on Monday, Sept. 23, I attended Professor Aziz’s event. She had a lot to say that I disagreed with — for example, she sees the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as an admirable tool in pursuit of peace. On the other hand, I strongly oppose institutionalized BDS because it threatens the safety of even non-Zionist Jewish institutions, and is therefore dangerously antisemitic.

But I went to listen, and ended up sticking around to see if I could ask her a question. And nearly 90 minutes after she finished her talk, I finally got the opportunity to ask: “What is one thing you wish you were asked tonight, and what would your answer to that question be?”

She responded (and this is a paraphrase): “The question would be, ‘What can Jewish Americans do to be better informed about the situation?’ And my answer is: read books written by Palestinians.”

In other words: listen to perspectives you may not have considered before.

I followed up with a few other questions: Do you believe in a two state solution? Academically yes, but she prefers a one state confederacy model. How do you define Zionism? She distinguishes between cultural Zionism, which she supports, and political Zionism, which she doesn’t. 

She brought up some interesting points; she believes political Zionism is like Indigenous Americans demanding the rights to their original homeland, which is now the place of thriving secular American cities. And so did I; Israel is not a European colonial state, I said, in part because more than 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries in the 20th century and had nowhere but Israel to go.

But it was the first question she asked and then answered that sticks with me. Because Professor Aziz knows, like me, that an open ear is a requisite of a strong opinion.

And so I’ve listened to her. I’ve made a reservation for an audiobook on a list compiled by the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights that Aziz founded, and I look forward to listening to it when it becomes available.

I want to conclude this with an ask to my peers — listen to me. Give listening a try.

I was raised in a household where disagreement was the norm. I’m lucky. So many folks here at WashU grew up in an echo chamber — a single perspective was universal, and all others were seen with contempt. And now, when inevitably faced with disagreement on campus, they instinctively react with disgust.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can be better. We can have civil conversations about our perspectives and how they are informed by our individual lived experiences. 

All it requires is an open ear and a true desire to listen.