Over the past several days, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi from the talks and interviews he has given locally and nationally. Unfortunately, the media coverage outside the Upper Valley has focused more on his advocacy for Palestinians than on his pacifism. Mahdawi ultimately stepped away from the disruptive elements of the Columbia University protests based on Buddhist principles he embraced to help deal with the suffering he experienced growing up in refugee camps.

Mahdawi is not the first Buddhist peace activist to be shunned by our country. In 1966, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who led a peace movement in his country, came to the United States on a visa to lead a symposium at Cornell University on his efforts to achieve peace in Vietnam. He gave presentations on the same topic at several other locations under the auspices of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

At the time, Nhat Hanh’s goal was a cease-fire so that the Vietnamese people, who in 1966 were caught in the crossfire of a proxy war, could determine their own future. The northern part of Vietnam was controlled by a communist government led by Ho Chi Minh, who was supported by China and Russia; the southern part was led by Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky, who was supported by the United States following his takeover of the government through a military coup in 1964. In this situation, the Vietnamese people were forced to choose a side and had no voice in determining their future.

An essay in the New York Post written during Thich Nhat Hanh’s visit to the US described him as “devoutly anti-communist as well as anti-Ky” and during his visit he met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr who hailed him as “an apostle of peace and nonviolence.” Later that year, King nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, writing “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”

But Nhat Hanh’s pacifism was incompatible with the political environment of 1966 in the same way Mahdawi’s pacifism is contrary to the divisive messages emphasized today. The North Vietnamese and the American press saw Nhat Hanh as “pro-Communist” and the North Vietnamese reviled him because of his Buddhism. As a result of his pacifism, Nhat Hanh was a man without a country, exiled by both North and South Vietnam and unwelcome to stay in the US, where officials refused to extend his visa.

Like Nhat Hanh, Mahdawi is not choosing a side in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. He is seeking a voice for his countrymen, the Palestinians who, like the Vietnamese of Nhat Hanh’s era, are caught in a proxy war. Mahdawi’s desire to find a peaceful way forward, a desire rooted in his Buddhist beliefs, is a long way from how the Trump administration has described him, as “a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.”

In a country that is increasingly characterized as divided, peacemakers should be welcomed. But the reporting on Mahdawi illustrates the uphill battle peace activists face. Often they are defined not by the middle ground they are seeking but by the “side” they are not taking. In such a dualistic framework, conflict is inevitable and peace seems impossible.

Today, as in 1966, the problems facing our nation are seldom dualistic. They are complicated and knotty, a fact that peacemakers like Thich Nhat Hanh and Mohsen Mahdawi recognize, a fact that leads them to seek the understanding of those who do not share their perspective. If, in 2025, it appears that giving Palestinians a voice in deciding their future threatens US security, then we have not learned from our experiences 60 years ago when we ignored those who sought to find a peaceful way forward in Vietnam. Instead of imprisoning Mohsen Mahdawi, the US would do well to listen to his message and emulate his empathy.

Wayne Gersen is a retired public school administrator. He lives in Etna.