A year ago today, I wrote on my blog about the “sickening violence” of the massacres and kidnappings by Hamas. Little did I know that the violence would provoke a response that, while profoundly degrading Hamas’s military abilities, would kill tens of thousands of civilians and result in the destabilization of the entire region.
But I don’t want to write about events in the Middle East, about which I have strong feelings and slight expertise. I do want to talk about how the past year has affected education. We’ve seen fear and loathing — resulting from Oct. 7 and its aftermath — spread across the US and onto college campuses. It would be an understatement to say that many on campuses are increasingly wary of one another. It doesn’t have to be that way, as I have written in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education (which I draw on here).
As students and teachers, as people devoted to education, we must try to learn from all this. We can model meaningful opportunities for sustainable peace by showing that strong differences don’t have to end in violence. Wesleyan has programs that do just that. The Office of Equity and Inclusion, Academic and Student Affairs, along with the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, have all initiated educational activities to help students, faculty and staff build a greater capacity to have dialogues across difference. Sociology Professor Robyn Autry has been working with colleagues here, at Harvard and at the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, to integrate intellectual diversity and open conversation across the curriculum. Executive Director Khalilah Brown-Dean is building on the Allbritton’s history of community partnerships to help students learn to listen more deeply, respect differences of opinion, and find ways to take positive actions even when disagreements are not fully resolved. With the help of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Templeton Religious Trust, the Chaplains use a similar model as they build interfaith literacy across religious groups that might at first glance seem to have irreconcilable world views.
At the heart of all these efforts is a commitment to pluralism, not sectarianism — a commitment to learn from those whose views are different from one’s own. Building on that engagement, we can foster conversations that take us beyond the borders of the university, leaving our comfort zones to engage with our fellow citizens and not just with like-minded undergrads and professors. In the coming months, we will be announcing grants to support this kind of work — both at the curricular and co-curricular levels. Going beyond a defense of freedom of expression, as Eboo Patel has counseled, we can integrate pluralism into a great many aspects of the education we offer. We can model a pragmatic liberal education that comes from cultivating connection, not canceling perceived enemies.
October 7th is a day of mourning for many on our campus, and I am hopeful that everyone here will respect that. However one marks this sad day, let us remember that education depends not just on free speech and critical thinking, but on a willingness to listen for the potential to build things together. A year ago, I ended my blog post like this: May the wounded receive care, the kidnapped be returned to their homes, and the bereaved find comfort. And may it not be long before the peacemakers can find a way. Alas, it has now been a year with scant prospects for peace. Let us do what we can to help peacemakers find a way. At a time when so much is being destroyed, let’s be peacemakers who together use our education for constructive purposes.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece.
So many of us have been struggling to find an outlet for our anger and our pain, and you’ve outlined a productive way forward that is intrinsic to Wesleyan’s values.
Michael, I certainly don’t disagree with what you have written, above. But I do find it interesting that the the word, “Jew,” is missing from your “reflection.” When you write, “October 7th is a day of mourning for many on our campus,” I would add “many Jews” on our campus. It is a day that marks the worst pogrom in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Here in Berkeley, CA, where I now live, October 7 was marked by memorials throughout the Jewish community, but (alas) denigrated by many others who hide behind a misguided veneer of what I call progressive ignorance at best, and antisemitism at worst. I understand your need to walk a measured tightrope in the hope of fostering peaceful dialogue on campus. But as a Jew, yourself, please remember who was targeted last Oct. 7.
I support the efforts described above (pluralism, diversity of thought, etc.). However, this strikes me as something entirely un-new; like, isn’t this somewhat the heart of a liberal, humanities education? Like, hasn’t Wesleyan, Harvard, etc. been supposedly teaching this stuff all along? Yet, at crunch-time, (post October 7) it seems many students at these very same universities were utterly unequipped to put into practice what they were supposedly being taught all along. Something went terribly wrong. I question whether the same academics who were doing the teaching have soul-searched as to how they themselves fell short. Will you pivot? Will you acknowledge a need to pivot? Because if you don’t, what confidence are we supposed to have in you that you’ll recognize there is a flaw in your prior approaches. What did you teach them?! How do you teach them?! These are the questions you need to be asking yourselves.
I felt a sense of pride upon reading President Roth’s Reflections on October 7th. Following my graduation from Wesleyan in 1966 and then, an MBA from Stanford, I embarked upon a challenging and rewarding business career. Following a late-stage degree in conflict resolution and an acquaintance with Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos Horta, I found myself in 2004 in East Timor as advisor to President Ramos Horta on matters of peacebuilding and community development. He had returned to East Timor after 24 years of exile during which his country and his countrymen had experienced the most brutal oppression at the hands of the Indonesian military. His purpose as leader of the world’s newest independent country but also the world’s poorest country was to establish a sustainable peace, foster reconciliation among internal and external conflicting parties, rebuild a destroyed infrastructure, and, somehow, help his countrymen take steps to emerge from their suffering and subsistence life. Of course, there was much involved, and East Timor was the focus of attention for the UN and the international aid community. What was most amazing to those of us from the West who were there to help, however, was President Ramos Horta’s absolute persistence in finding ways to get people to talk and continue talking. It did not go smoothly. There were ups and downs, successes and failures. One morning he had arranged for two conflicting parties to meet at his home in order to open a dialogue. While returning to his home following his early morning walk on the beach, an assassination attempt left him lying in the road outside his home for 30 minutes with three bullets in his chest. After several months of recovery in Australia, President Ramos Horta returned to resume his quest for peace, reconciliation, and growing prosperity. He has never relented in his persistent work to find ways to get people to talk and continue talking. I admire and take great pride in the work being done at Wesleyan, as described in President Roth’s reflections, to initiate “educational activities to help students, faculty and staff build a greater capacity to have dialogues across difference.” Keep it up!