Eliana Goldin
When I was at Columbia, I became friends with an Iranian guy. In class, everyone knew me as the Zionist and he as the Iranian, and we were all friends. After Israel attacked, I checked in on him. He told me that the Iranian people are tired of being oppressed by the mullahs and that he, his family, and his people couldn’t be happier with Israel. This interaction reaffirmed for me that not everything is as the media tells it — there is a whole underground that is severely and intentionally underreported. Our interaction also reminded me just how crucial international students are to a well-rounded education. The Ivy League, and all universities, are incomplete without our international students. The world is complex. It’s crucial that we lean into that complexity, whether as civilians reading the news or as students sitting in the classroom.