JCF Announces 2012 Haas Koshland Award Winners

Each year we invite students to apply for the Haas/Koshland Memorial Award, which provides up to $20,000 to support a year of study and personal development in Israel. The award is open to college students, from sophomore year through graduate school, either from or attending school in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Oren Kroll-Zelden and France (Sissy) Geballe

This year’s Award winner, Oren Kroll-Zeldin is a doctoral student at the California Institute of Integral Studies in a program that stresses the connection between scholarship and activism.

“I focus my work in Jewish-Palestinian alliance building movements. This focus is one way I can commit myself to the work of justice. The Haas/Koshland Memorial Award is giving me the incredible opportunity to conduct my dissertation fieldwork in Jerusalem, working with and researching both Jewish and Palestinian communities.  A year in Jerusalem will help me realize my aspiration to be an educator who integrates scholarship and activism by enabling me to conduct my dissertation fieldwork. Though I know that it is not my responsibility to finish the work of justice, I also know that I cannot abstain from the work.  I owe a great deal of gratitude to the Haas/Koshland Memorial Award for giving me the opportunity.” Read the rest of Oren's statement.

Supplementary awards were also given to other highly qualified students Monica Deeb, Daniel Romero and Eliana Sudikoff. 

The men who inspired the creation of the award would have been impressed by the interest and motivation expressed by all the candidates this year.  As Frances Geballe, Daniel E. Koshland’s daughter and chair of the Haas/Koshland Committee, stated, “There are no strings attached to the award. We simply want to create a program that is of value to students, their universities and Israel — all of which were important to Daniel Koshland and Walter Haas.”