As a month of controversies and uncertainty surrounding former President Jimmy Carter's visit to Brandeis reached its conclusion, the response on campus-where many anticipated a highly charged atmosphere-was, in a word, underwhelming.About 30 demonstrators carrying signs with slogans ranging from "Carter lied, thousands died," to "Closing our eyes to injustice is not a Jewish value," to "End occupation now" gathered across from the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center by 4 p.m. in a fenced-off protest area near the Squire Bridge. While some displayed Israeli flags and colors in criticism of Carter, most of the participants were supporters of the former President, including about 15 members of a group called Jewish Voice for Peace.

Alan Meyers, a Boston pediatrician and member of that group, said that during five trips he made to the Palestinian Territories he observed conditions of "apartness" comparable to South African apartheid.

And members of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America told passersby that Carter's controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, presents a biased and incomplete picture of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

But the demonstrators' presence seemed miniscule compared to the hundreds of students and faculty stretching from Gosman's entrance across Squire Bridge and onto the Peripheral Road-not to mention the fleet of journalists of every stripe, including reporters from the Associated Press, Reuters, The Boston Globe, The Weekly Standard, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and various Boston-area network news affiliates and radio stations, among dozens of others.

Members of the club Zionists for Historical Veracity planned to march from the Shapiro Campus Center to Gosman, hoping to sing and wave posters along the route. But with only four members and an alumnus present, they instead cheerfully speculated over how the afternoon would unfold as they walked. This group and others later distributed flyers criticizing Carter's book.

By 4:35 p.m., when Carter took the dais to a standing ovation, the campus had gone from near calmness to total placidity, with community members watching the presentation via closed circuit in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium and Theater, demonstrating a repose mirrored by those listening to Carter in person.

These images clashed sharply with the predictions of some students interviewed earlier in the day, who said they anticipated a large number of protesters and a media circus-only at the end of Carter's speech did members of the press become frenzied, dashing to interview students who had asked Carter pre-selected questions.

Still, others predicted that the presentations by Carter and Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor and prominent voice in the Israeli-Palestinian debate who rebutted Carter, would catalyze more exchanges on the issue at Brandeis.

"I think it's actually going to open up debate among students," said Gabi Lupatkin '09, co-president of ZaHaV. "Dershowitz and Carter have very different opinions . There's going to be a lot of students who will listen to both of these and want to discuss them."



-David Brown contributed reporting from the Shapiro Campus Center