Busy year for students

RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

• Jewish Campus Life launches its first Israel advocacy mission. The program draws 400 students for the five-day mission, and 80 remain for two weeks of advocacy training at Tel Aviv University.
  
  
• May 1, 2002: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee rolls out an expanded campus program, tripling the size of its budget and staffing. The new initiative works with four key activists on each of 60 campuses that AIPAC feels produce future political leaders.
  
  
• Summer 2002: Twenty-six groups come together to form the Israel on Campus Coalition, a national coordinating body that provides high-profile speakers and advocacy training for students.
  
  
• August 2002: The Jewish National Fund's Caravan for Democracy takes 13 students on a two-week training seminar to Israel.
  
  
• August 2002: As part of its first Israel advocacy program, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity trains 300 delegates at its international convention.
  
  
• Aug. 20-25, 2002: Hillel holds its annual Charles Schusterman International Student Leaders Assembly at Camp Moshava in Honesdale, Pa. About 425 students gather to plan campus activism for the year.
  
  
• Sept. 9, 2002: Rioting by anti-Israel protesters leads to the cancellation of a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University in Montreal.
  
  
• Sept. 16, 2002: Academic Daniel Pipes unveils Campus Watch, a Web site to monitor professors and institutions he deems anti-Israel or anti-American. The site ignites a furor in academia, with many denigrating it as McCarthyist.
  
  
• Sept. 17, 2002: Harvard President Lawrence Summers blasts what he considers growing anti-Semitism on campus, singling out a movement to force universities to divest their holdings in companies that do business with Israel.
  
  
• October 2002: The second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement takes place at the University of Michigan. The conference gains much media attention, but its divestment campaign flops over the course of the year amid administrative rejection and counter-petitions.
  
  
• November 2002: Chabad announces a plan to expand from 61 to 81 full-time Chabad houses on campus.
  
  
• November 2002: The annual General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities federation umbrella is complemented by a student "Zionism Teach-in'' that draws about 300 people.
  
  
• December 2002: Concordia University's student government tries to remove Hillel as a sanctioned student group for distributing material related to the Israel Defense Force. The move ultimately fails.
  
  
• January 2003: Hillel launches Israel 101, a campaign to fill the next 101 days with innovative, student-led Israel programming.
  
  
• March 30-April 1, 2003: At its annual policy conference, AIPAC presents the White House with pro-Israel petitions bearing 55,000 signatures from students at 60 colleges.