Support Bethlehem University in Memory of Theresa

Support Bethlehem University in Memory of Theresa

January 25th, 2024 would be my mother Theresa Willett's 70th birthday. She passed away on March 18th, 2008 after a three-year battle with ALS. I can't think of a better way to honor her right now than by supporting Bethlehem University in the West Bank, a cause that was dear to her heart for years.

(This is her with my brother Colin on her trip to the Holy Land in 2003, posing with a copy of the Oregonian's Travel section, so she could send in the photo for them to print in their travel challenge. Yes, she packed a copy of the Oregonian in her suitcase to travel to Palestine just so she could take a picture of it there.)

Bethlehem University was founded in 1973, the first institute of higher education established in the West Bank. Though it is a Catholic college, it serves students of all faiths. Their vision statement: "Bethlehem University aspires to serve its students in their integral development and to contribute to building a free, peaceful and vibrant Palestine." It was founded as a result of the historic visit of Pope Paul VI to the Holy Land in 1964 and the resulting desire of the Catholic Church worldwide to do more to benefit the Palestinian people. As of 2020, there were over 80,000 Palestinian Catholics, most predominantly in the West Bank between Ramallah and Bethlehem.

The Bethlehem University Foundation, to whom these funds are directed, is a US-based nonprofit, so your donations are tax exempt. About the organization: "Bethlehem University Foundations sole mission is to support and promote Bethlehem University. The mission of the University is to provide quality higher education to the people of Palestine and to serve them in its role as a center for the advancement, sharing, and use of knowledge."

My parents first came to know Bethlehem University through their involvement in a Catholic organization called the Equestrians of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, which made them dress like this for formal events:

A huge part of their work was fundraising for Bethlehem University. In the early 2000's, they completed a large capital campaign to raise money for a new building on campus, and they were working with university staff to decide what to do with it that would be of greatest service to students. The committee was mostly men, according to my mom, and they were all gung ho for a new science building.

"That's not what they need," she said. "What they really need is a coffee shop."

She explained to them that in her experience, one of the most important aspects of going to college is that it forces you out of your bubble, to get to know people who are different from you. But at the time, the campus didn't have a community space of any kind where students of all faiths and backgrounds could gather and just hang out and get to know each other. That kind of socializing mostly happened off-campus, and you probably went back to your own neighborhood to have coffee there. She believed strongly that the most valuable thing they could do with the money they'd raised was facilitate relationship-building, encouraging college students from all different backgrounds to break bread together and find common ground.

She won. They built a coffee shop.

(There was even a plaque on the front door with our family's name on it, for a little while. We've got pictures of it somewhere.)

When my mom died, my dad chose to honor her by setting up a scholarship in her name at Bethlehem University for Palestinian Catholic women in STEM who were planning to remain in the region. A lot of Christian Palestinians, especially those educated at Christian schools, speak English or French and therefore they've often been more competitive candidates for emigration to Europe or North America. In 2009, when the first scholarship was awarded to a woman named Nisreen Al-Najjar, it seemed like such a hopeful thing to support promising Palestinian students in science and tech who wanted to stay and serve their own communities. Of course it feels different now, and it's hard not to hope that they did get out, that they're safely away from the violence in their region now.

Reports of the destruction of schools and universities in Gaza have been all over the news. Phillippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General for UNRWA - the UN agency with specific responsibility for Palestinian refugees - recently returned from his fourth visit to Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 7th and expressed grave concern that, because of the destruction of so many educational institutions, "I'm afraid that we're running the risk here of losing a generation of children." Even if a ceasefire is granted and displaced Palestinians are allowed to return to their homes in Gaza, students won't have schools to go back to. This makes it all the more necessary to preserve Bethlehem University and other institutions like it in the West Bank, which are still standing, and can hopefully support displaced college students from Gaza who deserve the opportunity to finish their education.

My hope is that in honor of my mom's 70th birthday and this cause that meant so much to her during her life - and which feels even more urgent and necessary now - I would love to raise $7,000 in support of the college's scholarship fund, to support low-income Palestinian students who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. I still feel like my mom's vision of a campus coffee shop where Christian, Muslim and Jewish college students from all different backgrounds can all just be people together is worth preserving everywhere it currently exists.

My parents, brother and sister all spent time in the Holy Land around 20 years ago, and since the attacks on October 7th I've heard stories from them that I don't think I'd ever heard before. My sister talked about traveling with Catholic Relief Services and touring refugee camps, sitting for hours at checkpoints during Ramadan, meeting former Israeli soldiers who became conscientious objectors from the IDF because they could not bear the way they'd been asked to treat Palestinians. My dad talked about visiting close-knit interfaith neighborhoods where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim-owned restaurants were all closed for the sabbath on different days of the week, so wherever their tour group ate dinner on the weekend they'd be amongst families from different faiths, all enjoying their evening together like neighbors do.

The path back to that feels difficult to see right now, but what I hold onto the most from my conversations with my mother about the Holy Land after her visit there in 2003 was that it wasn't difficult for her to separate individual people - especially young people - from the things their governments do, or things ostensibly done in their name by terrorists which they didn't ask for or want. It's just that the voices pleading for everyone's humanity to be recognized and acknowledged, that everyone in the region deserves to live in peace, are often ignored or are harder to hear. But that vision, and this institution, meant a lot to my mother, so your support would mean a lot to me.

Thank you so much!