Two Peoples, One Land: The History and Complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

David Bisno | Winter/Spring 2025

With the Middle East in continuing turmoil, we'll try to understand the problem from all perspectives during three intensive Friday afternoons. David will again, as he did last winter, lead us through the history and conflicts of the Holy Land—now with important revisions, additions, and updates, including the present truce with hostage and prisoner return. Without advocacy but with even-handed care and scholarship, David will help us understand the competing claims and why a solution is so difficult. This talk, with remarkable illustrations, will take us from Abraham to Herzl, from Arafat to Netanyahu ... and up to Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

We’ll consider many important questions. Whose land is it, anyway? Whose land has it been? What does the Bible have to do with it? Who are the indigenous people? Who has the “Right of Return”? Why Israel? Why Palestine? Why the Jews? Why the Muslims? What do Christians have to do with it? What are the myths under which we’ve been living? Why have there been so many campus protests? Is there a solution? If so, what might it look like?

Lecture 1/3
Part # 1  History to 73 A.D.
Part # 2  Why Have People Hated the Jews?
Part # 3  The Need to Flee

Lecture 2/3
Part # 1  Zionism
Part # 2  The Palestinian Story

Lecture 3/3
Perilous Wars, Failed Accords
Hollow Hopes, Truths & Myths                                                           

Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People
From Movie Sets to the White House: Highlights from a Reporter’s 44-Year Career

Martin Kasindorf | Fall 2024

From the perspective of a wide-ranging career writing for California newspapers, Newsweek, USA Today, Newsday, and the New York Times Magazine, Martin will introduce VISTAS members to the personalities and historic events he covered, contrasting the political and media environments of print journalism’s 1960s heyday with today’s internet-era trends and tensions. Highlights include interviews with nine presidents, from Truman to Trump; Northern Ireland’s violent Troubles; 13 national conventions; campaign travel with John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy (Marty was there at his assassination), Jerry Brown, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other candidates; six years of White House life and worldwide Air Force One travel with George H. W. Bush and Clinton; the trials of Sirhan Sirhan, Charles Manson, Patricia Hearst, and other defendants; the quirks of Hollywood stars and directors, from John Wayne and Groucho to Brando, Spielberg, and Jane Fonda.

Part 1/2:

Part 2/2:

Whose Land Is It, Anyway?

David & Fay Bisno | Winter 2024

With the Middle East at war and students on U.S. campuses reacting, David Bisno presented 5 carefully balanced lectures asking important questions and making clear the tortured history of Israel and Palestine.    The problems were not settled but the class came to understand the competing claims and appreciated why a solution is so difficult,   From Abraham to Herzl, from Arafat to Netanyahu and listening to an erudite, compassionate Palestinian, here are the LINKS to the 5 presentations:

1.)    Biblical history - Whose Land was it?

2.)   Why people hated the jews – the need to flee

3.)  Zionism & Palestine

4.)  Wars & accords

5.)  Palestinian Mohsen mahdawi visits

The Allure of Fascism Here and Abroad
Perspectives on the Court from the Left and the Right

David Bisno | Winter 2023

Dr. Bisno asked VISTAS students in 2019 Is This How Fascism Comes to America?
Students came to appreciate that much of the world including large parts of the U.S. are choosing to embrace Fascism with a white knuckled grip….if not with guns. WHY the allure?   What don’t we understand?  Are we looking at the world through “rose colored glasses”?   What questions should we be asking?

Civil Unrest in the 1960s

Robert Benham | Winter 2022

The 1950’s and 1960’s were transformative in leveling the opportunities available to all citizens of our country.  This series of programs delves into the persons and events that spearheaded what has become known as the Civil Rights Movement.  It offers insight into many of the landmarks of those two decades and contains filmed footage of the major events of the era.

Lecture 1, Parts A and B:

Lecture 2, Parts A and B:

Lecture 3, Parts A & B:

Lecture 3, Parts A and B:

Lecture 5, Parts A and B:

Lecture 6, Parts A and B: