By
Jim Sheahan
Bard College Sports Information Director
Four years ago,
Benjamin DiFabbio was a high school athlete from Connecticut with excellent grades who wasn't even sure Bard College was the right place for him.
Today, he's a well-traveled, multilingual, focused NCAA Div. III athlete with his sights set on law school, then a career in politics. He probably wouldn't say it this way, being the thoughtful, contemplative person he appears to be, but Ben DiFabbio is trying to change the world.
He's not alone in his efforts.
DiFabbio has spent the last three summers in the Middle East through Bard College programs. The first, the
Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative (BPYI) is the only entirely student-run Palestinian engagement program in the United States. Every year, 20 students from Bard travel to Mas'ha, a small village in the West Bank, and DiFabbio has done it three times.
Through a partnership with the community, Bard students run children's summer camps and community projects and teach English, among other things.
But this past summer, in addition to his annual work with BPYI, DiFabbio completed a pair of internships that had him living in Jerusalem with three other Bard students for all of June and July.
DiFabbio sits with legs crossed, with a look of great intensity through piercing blue eyes, and says the trip changed his life.
“I'd call the experience … centering,” DiFabbio said, pausing to find the right word. “It's interesting to study life over there, but it's a lot different living it. The reality is around you all the time.”
DiFabbio was one of 11 Bard students to be named a Dengler Fellow through the
Human Rights Project at Bard, and one of 40 Bard students to win a Community Action Award from
Bard's Center for Civic Engagement. Those awards funded his trip to Jerusalem.
He simultaneously completed two internships this past summer. One was at the Foreign Relations Breakthrough Project for the
Organization for International Cooperation (OIC), and the other was for the
Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA).
“For the OIC, my job was to make connections with organizations in and around the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority with an interest in peacekeeping and conflict resolution,” DiFabbio said, “and try to set up meetings between officials and OIC President Arnold Keiser. My task was … challenging.”
DiFabbio describes PASSIA as more of a think tank, where he contributed to research and did some writing.
Dr. Mustafa Abu-Sway, the Deputy Head of PASSIA, has taught at Bard twice as a Visiting Professor, and that's how DiFabbio even knew it existed.
The revelation for DiFabbio came not only from working on his internships, necessarily, but from living in Jerusalem. The four Bard students were able to secure housing just a few days before they arrived, and it was no easy task finding a place that could house four students with the money they had in hand.
“When I was living in Mas'ha, we wen
t on trips throughout the West Bank … and yes, it's a culture shock,” said DiFabbio, who learned to speak Arabic at Bard. “The cultural exchange … that's kind of the point.
“But now that I've lived in Jerusalem, I think I can speak better about the conflict,” he continued. “In Jerusalem, what I've heard [Jerusalemite Israelis] say is, 'Let them live their lives.' But the Palestinians feel that their livelihood is stopped by the state of Israel … that everything they can do is a 'gift' of the Israeli government. If they want to travel from city to city, for example, they have to get a special permit from the government.”
In spite of the limit on their freedoms, DiFabbio says, the Palestinians are as a group the happiest people he has ever met.
“Their lives aren't 100 percent free,” DiFabbio said. “But they develop close-knit communities built around their families. Family is so important to them. And it goes beyond that. They enjoy what they have. As a middle class white guy from America, it's hard not to feel guilty. It's an important lesson. We've always had things provided for us and we take those things for granted.”
DiFabbio is back in the states now, completing his senior year. He's a three-year member of the men's cross country team at Bard – and yes, he ran in the heat in the Middle East.
“I love running,” DiFabbio said. “When I have a paper to do, I go for a run. I have to. It helps me focus.”
He's diligently working on his Senior Project, which is unique to Bard. It is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student's cumulative academic experiences. Preparation begins in the junior year, and one course in the senior year is devoted entirely to Senior Project. The student submits the completed project to a committee of three professors and participates in a Senior Project Review.
DiFabbio's Senior Project involves the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and the State of Exception, a legal concept that gives sovereignty the ability to transcend the rule of law in the name of the public good.
He won't be applying to law schools just yet, though.
“Now that I've been there and I've spent years studying it, it's become a part of my identity,” DiFabbio said of the Middle East. “I'm going to go back there.”
He is applying for scholarships that will send him back there after he graduates with a degree in Political Studies.
One of his fondest memories is from the village of Mas'ha. He started strumming a guitar one day, and almost 50 children gathered around, because they'd never heard one before.
“I can't believe the kinds of things I can do here,” DiFabbio said, referring to Bard. “There are no other schools that will send students on their own initiative to the West Bank.”
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