Remembering Shimon Peres and His Visit to BVU

September 28, 2016

Shimon Peres, Israeli statesman and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has died at the age of 93. Peres visited Buena Vista University on Oct. 9, 1998 as the ninth speaker in the William W. Siebens American Heritage Lecture Series. Today we look back on his visit to BVU.

Middle East Leader Sheds Light on World Peace

Buena Vista Today, Winter 1999

One of the principal architects of building peace in the Middle East, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres offered a local audience his solutions for ending discord between the Western world and the Muslim world: attack poverty, educate the uneducated, help build the Middle Eastern economy, and end terrorism.

Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with then-Israeli prime minister Yatzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yassar Arafat, was the guest of Buena Vista University on Friday, Oct. 9, as the 1998 William W. Siebens American Heritage Lecture Series speaker. Peres spoke with students in the afternoon before joining University faculty and staff, Storm Lake community leaders, and Iowa Governor Terry Branstad for a banquet in the Harold Walter Siebens Forum on the BVU campus, followed by a two-hour lecture in Anderson Auditorium.

Like a speaker from his part of the world some 2,000 years ago, Peres often illustrated his ideas with parables.

When you are being bitten by mosquitoes, Peres said in response to a question about terrorism, it's no use to try to swat every mosquito. You have to drain the swamp. America needs to invest in the economy and in education in third world countries, he said, just as it invested in Germany and Japan at the end of World War II.

Mixing religion with politics, he said, is like putting a stone in a basket of eggs. Politics is the art of compromise. Religion is a commitment to non-compromise. "I think political coalitions should be political coalitions and not religious coalitions," he said.

Peres also told a story in expressing his admiration for the American two-party system. In the Israeli system, minor factions have the balance of power, giving them a disproportionate influence. That, he said, is like the man with a lady friend to whom he sent so many letters — that she married the mailman. When questioned about President Clinton's recent difficulties, Peres brought up a Biblical story. "We have our own unresolved issue of David and Bathsheba," he said, to the delight of the audience.

Peres' advice to students was "never live only for your own life. Prefer to serve something larger than yourself." If you don't, he said, you will become a bore to yourself and others.

You will make mistakes, he told the students. That is an inevitable part of living. Still, he said, "I would prefer to make mistakes because I believe in people, not because I didn't trust them."

"I highly recommend that you prepare yourself to learn how to learn. Unless you prepare yourself to learn everyday, you will not be up-to-date," he said. "We prefer to remember than to think," so it's better to "learn how to learn, not how to remember."