The celebrated American soul musician Ray Charles visited Israel three times during his life. During the first, in 1972, he discovered that he was wildly popular in the Jewish state. So enthusiastic was his reception in Jerusalem that in his autobiography Charles recalled that “in 30 years on the road, I had never experienced anything like this.” Shalom Goldman writes:

Last week, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an influential academic organization, announced that Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University would receive one of its annual awards, citing her “courage, persistence, political foresight, and concern for human rights . . . in her scholarship, teaching, [and] public advocacy” as well as her efforts to “advance the agenda for social change in Palestine, the United States, and internationally.” Those efforts, notes Jonathan Marks, include supporting the exclusion of the Jewish campus group Hillel from a university-wide event, and lambasting the school’s president for apologizing for that exclusion: