By Arpan Josan & Joanna Reid
Since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, both Muslim and Jewish Adelphi community members have expressed concerns about Islamophobic and antisemitic hate speech. During the Fall Arts Festival’s popular Chalk Up event on Oct. 11, 2023 students were reported to have poured water on Palestine flags drawn in chalk on campus sidewalks; others added the word “terrorist.” Some students and a professor have shared with The Delphian that they had hate speech directed at them by other students.
In February, Adelphi’s Chabad group hosted an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier to speak on campus and a newly formed Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) protested outside the Center for Recreation and Sports (CRS) where the event was held. Members of both student groups shared that they were on the receiving end of hateful comments.
SJP founder Hayaa Beig said, “Students and professors that are visibly Arab or South Asian have been called names such as ‘terrorist’ on campus. They’ve been told: ‘That’s why we bomb people like you’ and other horrible statements of hate and prejudice.”
The club’s faculty advisor Sarah Eltabib, senior lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences, recalled a similar experience with a student who overheard her in a hallway about coordinating the delivery of aid to Gaza with the Egyptian government. “A student passed by and said: ‘Let them die–what’re you doing? Don’t waste your time. Don’t send anything to them, let them die.’ I turned around and they walked away. I was on the phone preoccupied with something more important, so I just let it go,” she said.
Though both the speaker event and the protest were monitored by administrators and Public Safety, senior Bradley Greissman, who is Jewish, said he experienced antisemitism when he left the IDF soldier event and ran into the SJP protest. Calling the group “Hamas supporters,” he said, “As we were leaving, we had to pass the protest. Two of the girls in the protest flipped me off and one guy screamed in my face ‘---- you’.”
The administration said that there have not been direct reports of any of these incidents. However, Sentwali Bakari, Adelphi's Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, said that any form of hate is not tolerated on Adelphi’s campus. “Hate speech — including antisemitic or Islamophobic speech — threats and intimidation are not condoned on Adelphi’s campuses.
“We recognize members of our community may be dealing with hurtful and insensitive speech, particularly in the face of polarizing views on global and political situations. My office, Public Safety and other University offices have met with our Muslim and Jewish student groups, and our Provost [Christopher Storm] has encouraged concerned faculty to reach out to him regarding issues they are facing,” Bakari said. “We have worked to be responsive when anyone in our community has raised questions or concerns. We will continue to listen to every member of our community and seek to make our campuses a safe and respectful place that fosters civil exchange of differing viewpoints.”
An Evolving Situation
Beig, a first-year ethics and public policy major, said that seven Adelphi students and their advisor Eltabib formed SJP earlier this semester because “many students and professors felt that their views surrounding this tragedy weren’t being adequately heard.”
When reached, Chabad members declined to be quoted in this newspaper. Their director Rabbi Yankel Lipsker said they didn’t want to be identified due to fear for their safety.
“The Chabad group believed it was important to give students an opportunity to hear a first-hand account of the conflict that was not filtered through media platforms. They wanted to give students the opportunity to ask questions (even challenging ones), learn from the presentation and engage in dialogue,” Rabbi Lipsker said. “That was the goal of the event. Students who attended did that. Other students preferred to protest and that was their right– provided they did not prevent those who wished to hear the speaker from doing so. We continue to believe that the ability to have conversations like these is a necessary first step toward peace and coexistence.”
Rabbi Lipsker added, “The bottom line is that the university needs groups that bring unity, harmony and love, not groups that bring discord and hate. Chabad is committed to continuing to be a home for Jewish students and a source of Jewish pride and positive programming for our whole campus community.”
Greissman explained why he wanted to hear the soldier speak. “It was really important to hear the perspective from someone who actually served in the IDF. I think that Chabad did the right thing by inviting him to campus.”
There is a new Jewish club being formed, though at press time Rabbi Lipsker was unable to find eBoard members willing to be interviewed.
Lydia Darrow, a senior, said that while she hasn’t personally experienced antisemitism since the war began, she knows of people on campus who have.
“However, we can’t address antisemitism without recognizing that Islamophobia has increased as well. We must stand in solidarity with each other,” Darrow said. “I’m not active in Chabad, so I didn’t realize that they had brought an IDF soldier on campus until I saw SJP protesting. As a progressive Jew who supports Israel’s right to exist and condemns the October 7 Hamas massacre that killed 1,200 Israelis and took 253 hostage, I also condemn Israel’s war crimes against Gaza, which have killed over 30,000 people, including more than 13,000 children, and left the region on the brink of famine.”
University Actions
In response to whether or not the university has addressed the war in the Middle East adequately on campus, Bakari said: “The situation in the Middle East is a constantly evolving and highly polarizing issue that is constantly in the headlines. The communications we’ve shared are focused on ensuring that our community members know about the programming and resources available to them. It is not the university’s intention to silence personal views by issuing a stance but rather it is our focus to ensure community members feel knowledgeable about the resources available to them. There are groups and offices on campus where open discussion is encouraged.”
Both Jewish and Muslim students on campus have expressed anger and fear but as of presstime The Delphian staff could not find reports of related clubs meeting with one another. In fact, Joseph DeGearo, assistant vice president of Student Affairs and dean of students, said he has reached out to both Chabad and SJP to facilitate a dialogue and to date neither group has taken him up on it.
“One of the things that I've noticed, which I find challenging, is that sometimes when groups have such strongly held beliefs, they find it very difficult to make room for hearing or trying to understand a position that might be different from theirs. I think these two groups and others with conflicts can be supported by understanding that this kind of challenge has to be understood as a process and not an event. There's no switch or button or magic that will change things quickly,” DeGearo said. “I stand ready to sit with any member of those groups, either individually or together. My desire would be to help them find some sort of understanding. But I also value students' ability to explore these kinds of conflicts. There is growth and development that comes out of conflict.” Various departments and organizations on campus have been addressing communications around the situation in the Middle East.
According to International Services, there are currently 19 Adelphi students who are from the region most closely impacted by the war: one from Lebanon, three from Iran, two from Saudi Arabia, five from Turkey and eight from Georgia (which is in Europe, but occasionally included in definitions of the Middle East). When asked by The Delphian specifically how the needs of international students are being addressed, the executive director of International Services, Wendy Badala, said: “International Services is dedicated to supporting the needs of our students. We understand the significant hardships caused by wars and military conflicts, natural disasters, political and/or financial crises that affect the international student community. … We also collaborate with campus partners to connect students with appropriate services and resources through referral, collaboration and consultation with institutional partners such as, Academic Advisors, Academic Services, Care Team, Student Counseling Center, Interfaith Center.”
In March, students and faculty were encouraged to attend the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) effort spearheaded by Chotsani Williams West, executive director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. The effort promotes inclusive and community-based healing activities and policy designs that seek to change community narratives and broaden the understanding of diverse experiences among people. However, West said that the external events since Oct. 7 shouldn’t be conflated with this larger initiative.
“I would say that the healing circles are a way to bridge multiple gaps. I'm sorry that that experience [the Chalk Up event] is something that is still fresh in our minds. I think that the healing circles contribute to a longer, threaded-through conversation around the importance of history and our lived experiences,” she said. “The circles are a way to discuss how we have felt about experiences, our encounters and how we've engaged the world. And so, I know that that sounds very big and possibly abstract, but I think that the healing circles are a way to have larger conversations and having people express how they were made to feel and how they experienced it. And how they experienced things that were on campus, I think, are critical. And that is what the healing circles are intended to do through the process of storytelling and through the process of narrative experiences.”
Michael Hoffner, coordinator of the Mindfulness Center & Interfaith Center, also offered a place for students to be heard during this controversial time.
“I am aware that there have been disrespectful and hurtful remarks made to members of the Adelphi community during this time. It is heartbreaking to know that people have had to experience this,” he said. “I believe the best way we can help minimize this is to actively work to cultivate and promote peace and deepen our bonds as a community. We also want to make sure our responses center around healing, support and reconciliation.”
Abdin Chande, an associate history professor and the Muslim chaplain in the Interfaith Center, offered ways students can feel more comfortable speaking up.
“Educators, counselors and interfaith leaders can all assist students to feel safe and to create a safe environment for them to be able to speak about their concerns without fearing any backlash,” he said. “This is where the administration has experience and can help as it has offices that deal with such matters as diversity and inclusivity that can be deployed to allow students to address their issues.”
Bakari added that any community member who feels unsafe, discriminated against or threatened should contact Adelphi’s offices of Community Concerns and Resolution (OCCR) and/or Public Safety to make a formal report to make administrators aware and that they can take immediate action.
“We will support you through the process. The University’s Code of Conduct prohibits all members of the University community from engaging in conduct resulting in or leading to endangerment, threatening behavior, harassment or discrimination. All reported incidents that necessitate a conduct investigation are acted on immediately,” Bakari said.
Sidebar: A New Course Suggests “Let’s Talk About It”
Citing the conflict in the Middle East as an example of the difficulty in having complex conversations on college campuses across the country, Peggy Cassidy is offering a new Fall 2024 course “Let's talk about it: Interpersonal communication, free speech, and campus conversations.” It will focus on how to develop communication skills to have civil discussions.
“The national polarization of civic discourse is so toxic that as a nation we need to learn how to have civil conversations with people, even when we disagree,” Cassidy, chair of the Communications Department, said via email. “And then recent world events have highlighted the importance of understanding First Amendment protections (and limits), and the concept of academic freedom and the way universities handle the difficult challenge of allowing and encouraging the freest possible expression of ideas while also managing the inevitable tension that it brings.
“Universities can, and should, be models to American society of how difficult conversations can happen in a civil and productive way,” she added.
The class will be a hybrid on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11-11:50 am for all majors and has no prerequisites. Students will develop and present an interactive session in the Adelphi Free Speech Symposium in late October.
–Arpan Josan
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