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

