In the first few years of the 21st century, colleges and universities all over the country, including the two largest University of Wisconsin campuses (Madison and Milwaukee), adopted a policy that effectively prohibited their students from doing academic study in Israel.
Said Terence Miller, director of overseas programs and partnerships in the Center for International Education at UW-Milwaukee, “students could no longer stay enrolled at UWM” and participate in such a study program. “Students needed to do it on their own.”
This had been based on U.S. State Department warnings about travel to Israel during the early years of the second Palestinian Arab intifada, said Miller and Prof. Chava Frankfort-Nachmias, associate professor of sociology and director of UWM’s Center for Jewish Studies.
But this policy has been reversed at many colleges and universities during “the last six months,” said Frankfort-Nachmias, including at UW-Madison (see Feb. 18 Chronicle).
And “as of a month ago or so,” she said, the policy changed at UW-Milwaukee as well.
Miller said UWM made the decision through “a consultative process” that involved assessing the newest State Dept. recommendations and the “tendencies and policies” of comparable academic institutions, and included participation of UWM faculty members.
However, even with the new policy in place, UWM does not have its own study abroad program in Israel, said Frankfort-Nachmias.
In the past, UWM students wanting to study in Israel had to participate through UW-Madison’s program with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem or UW-La Crosse’s program with Tel Aviv University.
Moreover, when they did that, UWM students had to withdraw from UWM and enroll at the other university — as do students at any academic institution participating in foreign study programs not run by their home institution.
After they completed the program, their credits could be transferred back to their home school, but not their grades, Frankfort-Nachmias said. Moreover, whatever financial aid such students might have received at UWM did not follow them to their study abroad program, she said.
Now, with UWM having “a generally expanding” program of Jewish studies, the university has become interested in developing its own program in collaboration with one or more Israeli academic institutions, said Frankfort-Nachmias.
And such a program might not only involve students from UWM and the Israeli institution studying at each other’s campuses, but also faculty members moving between both institutions, she said.
She said she hopes to be going to Israel at the end of May 2006 “to visit a number of potential programs.” Miller might go also, she said.
Frankfort-Nachmias said she was “hoping to have a program in place in about a year.”
Miller said that such partnership agreements between academic institutions “usually … take a year to 18 months.”
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