Four protesters from Chicagoans Against Apartheid in Palestine quickly conferred – “Is it them? Are they leaving? Yes!” – grabbed their signs and ran from one end of McCormick Tribune Center to the other. As they approached the revolving doors at the north side of the building, they hoisted their signs (End the Occupation!) and their faces, numbed from cold, became animated.

The protesters finished a day of distributing leaflets and joined with students who walked out of a guest lecture given by Israeli journalist Gil Hoffman. As well-meaning as they may have been, the students should not have left. Avoiding contact and refusing to ask questions is no way to solve the Middle East’s problems.

As I saw them near the revolving doors, their smiles receded somewhat as about 20 students from a total of 80 lecture attendees appeared. Perhaps the protesters had been expecting more, but they quickly began speaking with the students.

The protesters and students were one. Both groups had come to South Campus to protest the lecture organized by Northwestern’s Hillel and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. The four older protesters had remained outside. The younger crew of 20 attended part of the session and left midway without asking a question. They, too, were out to protest.

They didn’t think they could learn anything from the speech and they knew they weren’t going to convince anyone of their views. So they simply walked out. Communication junior Rayyan Najeeb told The Daily that asking questions would have been futile.

Unlike the few photographers dashing about, I wasn’t here for the scoop, but on my way back from class.

Before the four original protesters ran off to preach to the choir, I had been speaking with one of them, an older man who was very cold. He neither smiled nor shivered, but handed me a quarter-page pamphlet denouncing the talk, Israel and American interventionism.

Between long silences, he repeated the need to engage in dialogue. He drew comparisons between Israel and South Africa and he expounded on international law. But we found it very hard to converse. A few befuddled questions here, a short reply there. There was more silence than visible breath in the air. I was both amused and relieved to see him run off, but I wondered why he wasn’t living up to his own promise of dialogue.

I also wanted to hear more. So I followed him to the other side of the building, waited my turn and tried to ask a few questions. At the heart of things, I wanted to know only one thing: What could drive four people to spend an entire cold and wet day protesting for awareness and then lead them to run away from the one person who stopped to actually listen and speak with them?

I couldn’t figure it out then, and I still can’t. And that doesn’t bode well for anyone, from local level protests to national politics. There is a growing ideological divide between congresspeople, but the more frightening element is the discussion divide. We pretend to listen and converse, but we don’t. It has gotten so bad that the Senate filibuster – the act of speaking to block a bill’s passage – no longer involves words. To stall legislation, senators needn’t actually speak. They merely declare a filibuster.

In today’s age, saying you want to talk is a very different thing from talking. Speaking with your supporters is a very different thing from talking with a disinterested bystander. And speaking with me is a very different thing from speaking to your opponents. As you move up the chain of confrontation, it requires increasing courage.

And that’s something we have less and less of. It’s one thing to stand outside in the cold with signs that read “Honk for Palestine” and another thing entirely to tell a student why exactly Israel is an apartheid state or to explain to the legislature and country why a president’s job bill shouldn’t pass. It takes courage, and they didn’t have it.

If we act anything like those 20 protesters or the majority of Congress, a future of soliloquy followed by silence awaits. And that’s not a future I look forward to.

Scott Rosenfield is a Medill junior.

He can be reached at [email protected]