In late March, a missile fired from Iran struck the University of Haifa campus on Mount Carmel. No one was hurt. By sheer luck, no one was there. But standing on that hill afterward, looking at what remained, I kept returning to the same thought: our students need us now more than ever.

That is the job. Not in spite of what is happening, but because of it.

I have spent my career at the University of Haifa. I studied here and at the Technion, I built my academic life here, and for the past four years I have served as Dean of Students, responsible for the wellbeing of more than 17,000 students. I have never taken that responsibility lightly. But I have also never felt its weight the way I feel it now.

Nearly 600 of our students are currently serving in the reserves. Some have been in uniform for hundreds of days, having left behind their studies, their jobs, their families. One came to register for the new semester still in his uniform, carrying the dust of Gaza on his boots. He sat down, opened his laptop, and asked what he had missed. Others have not come back yet. We check in on them regularly, make sure they know their place is waiting, and that when they return, we are ready to help them successfully continue with their studies.

For those who remain, the challenges are no less real. International students living in our dormitories are navigating a war in a country that is not their own, far from their families, with sirens as a nightly backdrop. Students whose homes have been hit by rockets have come to us with nothing at all. We have given them scholarships, laptops, emergency funds. And for all our students living under the continuing weight of this war, the need for emotional, financial, and academic support never stops. We have a 24-hour phone line staffed around the clock, because crisis does not keep office hours. We have a team of more than 25 clinical psychologists working to meet a demand for mental health support that has surged beyond anything we anticipated.

Our students are not just surviving the war. They are showing up for everyone around them. They volunteer on emergency helplines for the elderly and isolated. They drive north to pick fruit on farms whose owners cannot manage alone. When evacuees from border communities came to live in our dormitories, our students organized food, clothing, and after-school activities for their children —an entire community built within our own. In the middle of everything, they asked what else they could do. We are proud of their social responsibility and leadership.

Part of what makes this possible, I believe, is that at its core, the University of Haifa is shaped by the same spirit that defines the city around it. Haifa is a place where Jews and Arabs live as neighbors, where coexistence is not a slogan but a daily practice. The university is the same. Our student body includes Jewish, Arab, Christian, Muslim, Druze and Bedouin students. Even under these stressful times, we continue developing special services and programs for our students. Our newest initiative, the Northern Lights program, supports Druze soldiers transitioning from military service into higher education. We are not one community with one story. We are many communities, and we take care of all of them.

After weeks of teaching entirely on Zoom, we look forward to meeting our students in the lecture halls they left when the sirens began.

But I want people to understand the cost of that resilience. We must do more to mobilize the resources that sustain our students: the scholarships that keep a reservist enrolled when they return after months away, the counselors who support students around the clock, intervention programs like our surfing therapy groups for post-traumatic stress.

That is what we are doing on Mount Carmel every single day — supporting our students not only as learners, but as human beings carrying an extraordinary burden.

Because when a missile lands on a campus, the question is not only what was destroyed. It is what remains, and how we continue to build and develop. And what remains here is a community that refuses to let its students face this alone.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)