Yuval Donio-Gideon, the consul for public diplomacy at the Consulate General of Israel in New York, speaks with The Lantern at the Keith B. Key Center on Monday. Credit: Daniel Bush | Campus Photo Editor
An Israeli consul met with Ohio State’s Vice President and Provost Ravi Bellamkonda and others Monday to discuss campus issues, including battling antisemitism.
Yuval Donio-Gideon, the consul for public diplomacy at the Consulate General of Israel in New York, said his visit to the university was to listen and understand the administration’s perspective on the tension at college campuses around the two-year Israel-Gaza war. Donio-Gideon said he wanted to also discuss the more nuanced issue of “maintain[ing] and insist[ing] on a constructive environment on campus.”
The Consulate General of Israel in New York serves to “[represent] the State of Israel in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Delaware,” according to its website.
Donio-Gideon is visiting several locations across Ohio, including Cleveland State University and Youngstown State University, to meet with university leaders and professors, Jewish students and other groups to discuss various issues related to the consulate general. He said in the last two years he has met with roughly 30 university leaders.
“The campus should be a place that all students feel free to bring their genuine self, so that they don’t have to hide their identity of any kind,” Donio-Gideon said. “Being open to other opinions [is] what we all want in a campus.”
Chris Booker, university spokesperson, said that Ohio State regularly welcomes domestic and international officials at the university.
“Today’s visit was one of several the consul is holding with Ohio universities,” Booker said in an email. “It was productive, and we look forward to continued engagement with government partners to support our students and scholars while advancing our educational and research mission.”
Donio-Gideon said that this goal can be very hard to achieve when there is a toxic and excluding environment between groups that hold different beliefs.
“You could have a toxic environment even without breaking the rules and in that regard, I’d like to hear how [the Ohio State administration] wishes to confront such issues,” Donio-Gideon said.
Provost Bellamkonda is an executive sponsor of the CAMPUS Act Task Force, formed in Autumn 2024 to develop long-term recommendations that would “combat religion-based harassment and discrimination and complement the university’s existing policies, processes, programming and services,” which are set to be implemented this year.
Donio-Gideon said that he would be “very happy to hear” from Bellamkonda about the task force, but it was not one of the topics they explicitly defined when arranging the meeting.
Donio-Gideon said that a large part of the discussions have revolved around the challenge of balancing the “sacred issue of freedom of speech, which we all cherish to a great extent” and making sure everyone on campus feels safe. He said these issues “[don’t] necessarily have to contradict, but that he has heard from Jewish students and others who have expressed concerns.
On Sunday, Donio-Gideon attended an event called Ohio Loves Israel, organized by Hillel groups across Ohio, where he heard from Jewish students who spoke about their experiences. He said that many of them have family members who have been directly impacted by the events following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, and that on-campus acts of protest in support of the Palestinian cause can cause significant distress.
Donio-Gideon said that during protests with chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” can make Jewish students feel that there is no room for them.
“Students who are Jewish or Israeli, and understand what ‘from the river to the sea’ means, there’s no room for Israel, they hear people chanting that as people saying ‘we want to murder all the people there, all the Jews,” Donio-Gideon said. “That’s what they hear, I don’t know what they mean — the people chanting — but that’s what they hear.”
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) did not reply to The Lantern’s request for comment prior to publication.
Donio-Gideon said this is an example of why dialogue is so important, and that “engaging in a way that is not threatening or excluding of certain groups,” can lead to better understanding across issues.
“You could say very important things and criticize harshly whatever you choose, the government of Israel, its policy, anything, that’s fine,” Donio-Gideon said. “But when you use hate speech or things that are sounding threatening to students who live next to you, then maybe it’s something that it’s better to reconsider and not have a toxic environment.”
