Student groups respond to Palestinian officials' recent bid for United Nations membership by holding public discussions on campus.

Fareed Zakaria, the host of CNN’s GPS and editor-at-large of TIME magazine, spoke to more than 700 Cornell students and political observers Monday in a lecture titled “The Rise of the Rest: The Post-American World."

After protests against the Egyptian government intensified this weekend, the director of Witte’s study abroad program decided that she and other students studying in Alexandria needed to evacuate.

With the Middle East crisis at the forefront of media coverage and debate, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni brought a unique perspective to the situation yesterday, speaking of his first-hand experience as a mediator between Israeli and Palestinian political parties.

“I have never encountered a process as complicated and complex as this one,” Zinni said.

Zinni, a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Professor, began his discussion in front of the packed HEC Auditorium with his worry that the Middle East peace efforts are being eclipsed by the current economic crisis and various other events.

Robert Malley, the program director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group in Washington, D.C., addressed a modest crowd inside Goldwin Smith’s Hollis E. Cornell auditorium yesterday evening.

Malley, who is widely regarded as an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gave an insider’s perspective on the nature of the crisis and offered a uniquely anecdotal appraisal of the problems currently facing Israel, Palestine and the United States.

Unlike most Cornell students, I have witnessed the current debate on the Gaza conflict and the vandalism controversy from abroad. Based on the fragments I can understand from friends and The Sun, it looks as though we are confronting a set of issues much broader than ourselves, but in which we are nevertheless implicated. I want to provide the perspective of a student who cares deeply about our campus politics vis-à-vis the Middle East — but who is currently in the region.

As campuses across the United States reopen after winter breaks, the recent Gaza conflict has been on many people’s minds. This is particularly true at Cornell, which has substantial and activist communities of Jewish and Islamic faiths. Many of us here feel the anguish of the situation in the Middle East.

Some students, faculty and staff have requested that I take some sort of action, or make a public statement in Cornell’s name. These communications have caused me to think again about the role of universities — and university presidents — in events outside our campus but not outside of our hearts and minds.