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In July of 2000, as Raisa Sheynberg ’04 (Pennington, N.J.) was preparing for her first year at Lafayette, then-President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to continue Middle East peace negotiations at Camp David.
Now, nearly four years later, Sheynberg, an international affairs major and government and law minor, will present senior honors research at a national conference on why the Camp David 2000 Summit, held from July 11 to July 25, ended with no agreement.
She will present her research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research this April. NCUR is a major annual event drawing more than 2,000 undergraduates, faculty, and administrators to hear and discuss undergraduate creative and scholarly work. Participants are expected to come from more than 400 colleges and universities nationwide. It is hosted this year by Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis.
This will be Sheynberg’s second time attending NCUR. Her abstract from last year’s presentation was among the limited number printed in the conference proceedings.
“I am essentially doing a lot of research in an attempt to piece together what happened leading up to Camp David and at the actual summit in order to assess the failure,” she says. “The more research I do, the more complex the situation seems to be I am absolutely fascinated with the complexities of international politics, negotiation, and the situation in the Middle East, and I have a very real desire to participate in these processes and improve them.”
“It is a very, very ambitious project,” says Ilan Peleg, Charles A. Dana Professor of Social Science and Sheynberg’s adviser for the honors thesis. “Raisa’s work has been very thorough, with deep analyses. She now knows the enormous difficulties of understanding what happened and why.”
Peleg, an expert on the Middle East peace process, is the author of Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: Legacy and Politics, a comprehensive book dealing with human rights in the occupied territories. It was named an Outstanding Scholarly Book by CHOICE, the publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, in 1996. He has authored other books on this subject and his other areas of interest, which include Israeli politics and culture, the nuclear arms race, U.S. foreign policy, censorship and freedom of expression, U.S.-Soviet relations, international conflict, and international terrorism.
Sheynberg, who began her research by reading journal and web site articles, information from online databases, and books on the subject, recently interviewed William Kirby ’59, former executive director of Search for Common Ground in the Middle East and former president of the American Foreign Service Association. Kirby spoke at Lafayette Feb. 27 as part of a series of discussions about peace and conflict resolution sponsored by the Chaplain’s Office Brown Bag Series and Students for Social Justice.
Sheynberg says both she and Peleg are working to find other interview subjects who were involved in the talks or in the peace process in general.
“It is an honor and privilege to work with Professor Peleg,” she says. “I think he is very eager to see me do good work and really develop my thinking. He’s been very helpful in letting me develop my own thesis but at the same time not letting me go too far. And he is fascinating to speak with.”
Sheynberg hopes eventually to pursue graduate studies in conflict resolution and work with a nongovernmental organization involved in it.
A graduate of Hopewell Valley Central High School, Sheynberg spent last summer working with The Population Resource Center, a nonprofit organization that aims to further the development of public policy by bringing the latest demographic data to policymakers through large symposia, policy briefings, and small-group discussions. On campus, she is a resident adviser and a member of Students for Social Justice and the International Affairs Club.
Honors thesis projects are among several major opportunities at Lafayette that make the College a national leader in undergraduate research. Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Forty-two students have been accepted to present their work at the next annual conference in April.