On October 30th, 2023, Davian Gekman, a leader of the National Jewish Student Union, was recently featured in a CNN interview, discussing some of the events that have been going on at campus and how the Jewish community remains strong despite these verbal attacks.
Cornell University has been under fire because a professor stated that the Hamas attacks were “exciting” and “exhilarating”. A student who had some association with that professor threatened to “shoot up” the Cornell campus, and he made threats against the Jewish community.
This caused a good amount of students to start transitioning into remote learning as they felt it was unsafe to learn on campus with threats being made.
Once a Glen Rock student, Gekman explained that some of the ideas and implementations for the Jewish Community at Cornell were attributed to his time at Glen Rock before serving as a National Jewish Student Union president:
“The lessons from the, you know, different classes I’ve had about public speaking, and how to approach a different in groups, that plus, just the working like working in a small group of 30 helps you understand how to work with a group of 50. And so that’s really very beneficial” Davian stated.
Gekman was approached to do the interview on CNN by a member of the ICC (Israel on Campus Coalition). Gekman realized that now was not the time to stand back, but to stand up for what was right. After being connected with the media and PR team, Gekman received immediate training and connected with CNN.
After the interview, Gekman received an overwhelming amount of messages from people in different parts of America. People from San Francisco reached out to him, and the Glen Rock community also gave immense support to Gekman.
“Ms. Walter, she took one of the student’s phones and directly, in a voice message, spoke to me like ‘Davian it was awesome seeing you on TV. Hopefully next time, it’s for another good reason.’ And the other students were telling me how she showed the video to all her classrooms. I love seeing the support from the Glen Rock community” Gekman stated.
Aside from the CNN interview, Gekman explained that there are so many ongoing issues in the world right now and that we must handle them together as a community.
“And I think like, this goes beyond the entire nation. It’s not even just the issue of Anti-Semitism, I think it’s any issue. And the way I say it as United, we are stronger. And that’s the main message around saying, united we are stronger.”
Gekman continued to explain the importance of community building in order to fight against hatred.
“And it’s just you know if you’re one person, you bring two people with you, and those two people bring two people with you. Ultimately, the more people who gather together, the more people stick together and fight out a strong sense of hatred that is currently looming over many parts of the United States. That strength comes through numbers and those numbers come from the amount of people you gather. It’s not much of a numbers game, but in some ways, it’s the amount of vocal support that you get” Gekman explained.
