UAlbany Student Among Consortium of 60 Student Leaders, Activists to Visit Middle East

Dylan Marshall, a junior Globalization Studies major, spent 10 days in Israel on a trip led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Dylan Marshall is a junior globalization studies major.

ALBANY, N.Y. (June 20, 2018) – The heightened tensions at the Gaza border make for a momentous time to visit Israel.

Dylan Marshall, representing the humanities department for the University’s Student Association Senate, went on a 10-day program led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby group. The students, who came from colleges and universities from across the United States, returned on June 6.

Marshall said he was able to participate through the Milstein Family Foundation Campus Allies Mission, a program designed to educate non-Jewish students and activists who have never been to Israel.

“The Middle East is such a confusing, uncertain place, and I wanted to go there to develop my own opinions,” he said, saying opportunities like speaking with a former journalist for the Palestine Liberation Organization and visiting a mosque to learn about the history of Islam provided him with more informed perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Other memorable experiences he said included meeting with Anton Salman, the mayor of Bethlehem, Israel, for a personal discussion, riding all-terrain-vehicles to the Syrian border and visiting a military base on the border of Lebanon.

“There was a point where we were standing on a hill looking into Syria, 10 miles from Damascus and 50 miles from Aleppo, and we could hear bombs going off in the distance,” he said, saying it was sobering to be so close to the heart of the Syrian civil war.

Marshall, who is pursuing minors in French and Arabic, said the language skills he has gained at the University helped further deepen his connections with the people he met.

“A lot of schools don’t offer a language department as robust as UAlbany’s, where we have Russian, Italian, German and so many others,” said Marshall, who transferred to the University last semester from Finger Lakes Community College. “Being able to have conversations with locals made for much a more meaningful experience that will help me better serve the campus community.”

Marshall said that following graduation, he hopes to get work with state government or in international diplomacy.

For more news, subscribe to UAlbany's RSS headline feeds