Combating Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Eric Ward, a nationally recognized expert on hate crimes and political violence, posed this question at a GDS gathering for parents this year: Has anyone attempted an intense conversation while in the middle of packing and moving homes?

“How’d it go?” Ward asked. “Not so good, right?” 

Now imagine making space for civil conversation about emotionally fraught social justice issues when the nation is still reeling from years of anxiety and political tensions. The COVID-19 pandemic. The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The war in Ukraine. Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack in Israel and the bloodshed that followed. Polarizing presidential elections. These events have taken a toll on the American psyche, straining our ability to engage in constructive dialogue and exacerbating a toxic intolerance that has led to a sharp rise in hate and bigotry.

“We’re highly stressed,” said Ward, executive vice president of Race Forward, a nonprofit racial justice organization. “We are in our emotional self, which makes it hard to have a rational conversation. We also have to admit that we did not do the work of building the relationships that were necessary to have these types of intensive conversations.”

GDS invited Ward along with Amy Spitalnick (CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) and Wajahat Ali (columnist for The Daily Beast) to campus for a discussion on how to counter antisemitism and Islamophobia in education–bringing together activists in the Black, Jewish, and Muslim communities, respectively, to share their perspectives. 

The panelists took part in two moderated discussions, one for parents and another for students, each led by GDS Assistant Head for Equity and Inclusion Marlo Thomas. The talks kicked off the School’s annual Social Justice Teach-In, a two-day program in February that offers dozens of on-campus workshops for HS and MS students.

The offerings organized by the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office featured a workshop for students on the rich history of Muslim-Jewish relationships and a session for faculty on how to talk about Israel/Palestine in the classroom. Both were led by Dr. Sara Jay, a teacher and lecturer in St. Louis, Missouri specializing in Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies. This year’s teach-in days theme was weaving a hate-free legacy through constructive dialogue.

Your kids are watching you 

During the evening discussion with parents, the panelists agreed that parents often project their anxieties and fears onto their children, who then carry this emotional baggage with them to school. 

“They are looking not just at the things we [parents] say, but the things we do, who we are with, who we aren’t with, who we lean into, who we lean away from,” Ward said. “We need to consciously reset what we are modeling for kids. … Our kids are not proxies for our emotional state.”

We also need to listen to what the youth have to say, said Ali, author of the memoir, Go Back to Where You Came From. Ask yourself, he said: Why is my kid, who is not Arab or Jewish, protesting for a ceasefire? Why is a Jewish grandfather contributing to AIPAC while his grandson identifies as pro-Palestinian? Lean in with curiosity and allow students the opportunity to practice talking about sensitive topics, he added. 

“I think this kind of intellectual humility allows space, for both parents and kids, to say: 'Let's learn this together; let’s have a conversation,’” said Ali, who often writes about America’s complicated relationship with Muslims, immigrants, and people of color.

Staying at the table 

Spitalnick told the audience that building the muscle needed to have tough conversations requires seeing each other’s humanity and breaking through “false binaries,” the zero-sum mentality that the safety and rights of one community come at the expense of another.

But she’s witnessed Jewish and Muslim groups retreat and put up walls instead of engaging in constructive dialogue with one another and identifying shared goals and values. Many figure that nobody showed up for them on October 7 or its aftermath, she said, so why should they keep showing up? “The only people that [mentality] serves are the very white nationalists, white supremacists, and anti-democratic fascists who are seeking to drive wedges between our communities and prevent us from building the coalitions we need at this moment,” said Spitalnick, who led a successful lawsuit against organizers of the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville during her previous role as Executive Director of Integrity First for America.

Spitalnick, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, acknowledged the generational trauma inflicted on Jews by the Hamas terror attack and her personal boundaries. For instance, engaging with people who celebrated October 7 as an act of resistance is “probably a red line for some conversations,” she said.

But overall, communities that are vulnerable to hate must recognize that their safety and interests are intertwined, which is why it’s so important to search for common ground. That’s a model, she said, that serves children well and combats hate and bigotry.

“The only way to push back,” Spitalnick said, “is to stay at the table with one another.”