28 | AUGUST 15 • 2024

and Islamophobia.”
Jewish Studies has existed for
more than three decades at MSU,
with a handful of core faculty and
30 affiliated faculty teaching up to
30 courses each year and reaching
about a thousand students.

NEW CLASS ON ANTISEMITISM

TO BE OFFERED
Aronoff, Fermaglich, Simon and
Dr. Laura Yares have developed a
one-credit online asynchronous
course on antisemitism that will
be offered every semester at MSU
starting this fall. They hope that in
the future it will reach hundreds of
students each year.
“We’re not responding to the
moment in that this has all been
part of a longer process,” Simon
says, “but we have to be reflective
in this moment on what does it
mean to be teaching a one-credit
course on antisemitism because
there’s now so much more optics
around what is antisemitism.”
They’re aiming to focus on
Jewish identity, history and
integration alongside tropes of
antisemitism throughout time,
Simon adds.
“We don’t have a political agenda.
We’re just hoping to approach
current events from a position of
empathy, to provide background to
help people understand their world
and understand experiences of
Jewish people throughout history
and today a little better.”
While MSU received an “F”
grade from the ADL’s Campus
Antisemitism Report
Card, which aims
to let students and
families know about
antisemitism and
campuses’ responses,
the school is engaged
in educating and
challenging students to

understand, respect and embrace
different perspectives, emphasizes
Jabbar Bennett, MSU vice president
and chief diversity officer.
“That grade does not accurately
reflect the world that’s been going
on prior to Oct. 7 on our campus
and that continues today as it
relates to all of the partners that
the Serling Institute engages locally
on campus and beyond,” Bennett
says. “We have a lot of support and
engagement around our Jewish
students. We have Jewish student
organizations and support for our
faculty and staff as well. Michigan
State University remains a safe
place for Jewish students and
any students who want to pursue
an education here in the state of
Michigan.”
The ADL unpgraded MSU’s score
to a “D” in June.
Conversations on Antisemitism
and Islamophobia is a continuation
of MSU Dialogues, a program
started several years ago to
increase awareness around identity
and build relationships across
differences, to work toward greater
equity and justice, Bennett says.
Since Oct. 7, interest in it has
risen, which they have been
able to meet with their existing
partnerships, he adds.
The conversations are a tool
for providing history and current
context for people to understand
and be more empathetic, to
understand the challenges others
on campus might be experiencing
because of current events in the
Middle East, he adds.
“It has always been important
because we’ve always had members
of our community who are
Jewish,” he says. “But it’s even
more important now, as we hear
about the conflict happening
in the Middle East, and not
understanding the conflict totally

or the history or its impact on
our campus and members of our
campus.”

SHARING THE MESSAGE
Mohammad Khalil, professor
of religious studies
at Michigan State
University and director
of the Muslim Studies
program, leads portions
of the Conversations
on Antisemitism and
Islamophobia program
with Morgan Shipley,
associate professor, Foglio Endowed
Chair in Spirituality, associate chair
for undergraduate studies.
Khalil recalls hatred faced by
Jewish and Muslim students around
the 2016 election period.
“It was evident we needed to step
up our efforts to challenge some of
these things that were taking place,”
he says, adding that what came
out of it was a grant application, a
program curriculum and a lot of
meaningful conversation, which
has included student and faculty
facilitators.”
In the series, they work hard
to make clear that nobody’s got
a monopoly on the truth and
encourage those participating to be
open to dialogue and discussion, he
explains.
“At some point in the series we’d
tackle hot topics … but we have
to make sure we’re not crossing
the line into hatred, so how do we
navigate these issues?” he says. “We
also looked in the last session at the
potential for allyship, how we can
work together.
“We offered in-person training
on antisemitism and Islamophobia
to more than 1,000 residential
advisers, to the athletics
staff and student athletes, to
communications staff and to the
staff of the Eli Broad Art Museum.”

“We’re not focusing on what’s
going on overseas but we are
addressing it so people can think
about the line, what is the line
between justifiable criticism and
bigotry? There’s going to be a lot of
debate about where the line should
be, but it’s an important discussion
to have.”
The Conversations
series, which started
as dialogue-based peer
education and was
iterated into its latest
form in the past two
to three years, has
an important role on
campus, says Kirsten
Fermaglich, professor of history
and Jewish Studies. “The idea was
to talk about religious hatred that
had radicalized, that had racial
tones to it, which is true for both
Islamophobia and antisemitism.”
And while there was indeed
a lot of tension in the room last
semester, leading to the addition
of security and counselors given
recent events, for the most part,
people who come are there to listen
and learn, she says.
“I think people who come are of
good faith, and they’re just trying
to be supportive of both groups.
They want to learn more about the
other side.”
The relationships that already
existed between the department’s
professors and the preexisting
material made it easier to engage in
the current moment, she says.
“I think the program started with
what brings people together. In
2017, 2019, it was easier to think
about what people had in common,
easier to talk about it and easier
to build a program around it. We
had these relationships that made
it easier to be able to talk across
differences, to be able to reach out
to one another.”

Mohammed
Khalil

OUR COMMUNITY

continued from page 27

Kirsten
Fermaglich

Jabbar
Bennett