HANOVER — College campuses across the country have been embroiled in controversy as students and administrators respond to the Israel-Hamas war.

Intent on containing any hostility in Hanover, a panel of Dartmouth professors from the Jewish and Middle Eastern studies departments gathered in a packed lecture hall Thursday to urge respectful and civil dialogue.

“We gathered here together because horror has come into our lives,” said Susannah Heschel, a professor in the Jewish Studies program, at the event.

Last Saturday, Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, attacked Israel, killing 1,300 Israelis and taking 150 hostages. Israel has since launched retaliatory strikes on Gaza, killing over 1,900 people there as of Friday afternoon.

Many of the 260 young people killed by Hamas at a now-infamous music festival in Israel, 3 miles from the Gaza border, were “the age of our students,” Heschel noted.

“At the same time, hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli government forces. We fear a war is breaking out, and it will be terrible,” she added.

In a statement on Tuesday, Dartmouth President Sian Beilock lamented the “overwhelming human tragedy playing out in Israel and Gaza.”

The following day, Beilock issued a second message, denouncing Hamas’ actions as “horrific terrorist attacks.” As institutions continue to release messages about the war, whether to label last weekend’s violence in Israel as “terrorism” is one in a number of flashpoint issues at the level of language.

The violence that is intensifying in Israel and Gaza is an ocean away, but has personal meaning for many members of the college’s community. Dartmouth should remain a place where all people are “allowed to speak without fear of harassment,” Heschel said.

But whether that mission is being realized was up for debate.

At the panel, attendees submitted questions and comments anonymously on note cards. One voiced concerns about threats against Harvard students behind a controversial letter condemning Israel.

“Some students at Dartmouth feel unsafe publicly showing support to Palestinians,” the card read.

A college is a place “founded on an exchange of ideas,” said Jonathan Smolin, an associate professor in the Middle Eastern Studies program, who offered his support to students who face a backlash for voicing their opinions.

At Dartmouth, “it’s unacceptable if there’s any blockage to that,” he said. “And if there is, email me.”

The role of higher education is to teach nuance, as well as methods for approaching “a complex issue that’s charged,” said Ezzedine Fishere, a senior lecturer with the Middle Eastern Studies program.

Otherwise, “you can do this from home,” Fishere said. “You don’t have to go to an Ivy League university in order to be indignant. The opportunity you have here is to learn.”

Other schools are grappling with contention related to the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza.

The campus of Columbia in New York City was closed to the public on Thursday as hundreds gathered in competing protests by pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups.

On Friday, a charter school in Las Vegas located in a former Jewish temple canceled classes out of an “abundance of caution,” according to the Associated Press. A Jewish day school in Maryland did the same.

Following the panel at Dartmouth, hundreds gathered at a vigil hosted by the college on the green in remembrance of the Israeli lives lost in last week’s attack by Hamas.

Prayers in Hebrew mixed with the chatter of radios held by the Hanover Police and Dartmouth Safety and Security, who patrolled the periphery of the gathering.

Mia Steinberg, a junior, spoke on behalf of Chabad and Hillel, Jewish groups on campus.

“Though I recognize the political complexities of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I want to be abundantly clear,” Steinberg said. “There is nothing political about taking civilians hostage or butchering babies. There is nothing political about celebrating death.”

Five students at the vigil declined to comment, not wanting their name in print out of “fear,” or an aversion to being “Googleable” in connection to the conflict.

President Beilock, her face lit by candles held by the attendees, addressed the somber assembly.

“Tonight, I stand with you, as a member of the Jewish community asking for your care, and asking you to continue to care for one another,” Beilock said.

She again condemned the “horrific, terrorist slaughter by Hamas of hundreds of Israeli civilians,” and lamented too the loss of life in Gaza.

Echoing the professors at the panel, she distinguished the college as a space primed for rising to such a challenge.

At Dartmouth, Beilock said, “intellectual tools” can be used “to better understand what has happened, to chart a path for the world out of this turmoil and to prevent these acts of terror and their terrible aftermath in the future.”

But “all of that will come,” she said.

“Today we need only look to one another to be reminded of what we value in this world and why we lean on each other in hard times.”

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.