“Harvard’s an interesting case in point, a place where the dialogue’s been very polarized, partly because of [University President Lawrence H.] Summers...This is fertile ground, for certain,” Handler said.

Ari K. Appel ’03, who organized Friday’s meeting, said he was planning to form a Tikkun group at Harvard.

“I think Tikkun—their moderate path to peace—is so, so important,” Appel said. “I think it has to work this way, it doesn’t work any other way...we need to adopt this Tikkun stance.”

While neither members of the Harvard Students for Israel (HSI) nor the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS) attended the event, they said they were not convinced the ideas would secure change in the Middle East.

“It sounds reasonable enough,” said HSI President David B. Adelman ’04. “But it doesn’t sound like anything new...These are the things everybody says will eventually happen. What means are they going to use to achieve this, that’s the biggest question.”

Tariq M. Yasin ’04, vice president of HIS, wrote in an e-mail that HIS “supports actions towards ending the current conflict.”

Handler said that in the face of tension stretching back thousands of years, she remains optimistic.

“People say to me, ‘It’ll never work, you’re an idealist,’” she said. “But it’s happened...Ghandi...Mandela...These people were viewed as total idealists.”