Campus reactions to the Israel-Hamas war.
Since October 20, student demonstrators have been holding a sit-in in White Plaza. They are asking the university to divest from and boycott Israeli ventures and academic institutions, increase resources for Palestinian and Palestinian American students, and call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Other students and community members recently held a rally in White Plaza that included a display commemorating hostages taken in the October 7 Hamas attack. Previously, members of Stanford’s Jewish community set up a long, empty Shabbat table with a seat for each hostage.
University president Richard Saller and provost Jenny Martinez, who on October 11 condemned the actions of Hamas, have been meeting with Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, and Muslim community members, who have reported safety concerns and incidents rooted in antisemitism and Islamophobia. In recent days, students have reported several incidents that might have been motivated by hate. Among them is a hit-and-run that is being thoroughly investigated. At the November 2 Faculty Senate meeting, Saller and Martinez reported that they are working with law enforcement experts to ensure campus security—including in partnership with Hillel at Stanford and the Markaz Resource Center.
Martinez, a legal scholar, delivered extended remarks that acknowledged the fear and grief on campus as well as the community-wide responsibility for constructive engagement. “Stanford stands against antisemitism and Islamophobia, and all forms of hatred and discrimination on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin,” Martinez emphasized.
The free expression of ideas necessarily includes protection for some forms of controversial and even offensive speech, said Martinez, as a matter of both Stanford’s policy on academic freedom and California’s Leonard Law, which prohibits private universities like Stanford from punishing students for expression protected by the First Amendment. However, some speech—such as threats, harassment, and incitement to violence—aren’t protected and “will not be tolerated at Stanford,” she said. Martinez is also worried, she said, about the chilling effect the current environment could have on speech. “Fears of being targeted for harassment or doxxed have left many afraid of sharing their views at all. Some who would like to learn more about the history and context of the Israeli-Palestinian situation are hesitant even to ask questions, for fear that what they say may be misconstrued.”
Martinez invited the university’s community members to reflect on their shared responsibility to uphold the principles that make higher education work. “That responsibility matters most not when discussing topics that are abstract, historical, or conjectural, but when addressing topics that involve acute human suffering and injustice,” Martinez said. “It is in these moments that we are most susceptible to inflict the very harms we have suffered upon others, to ignore, minimize, or rationalize the suffering of others differently situated but no less human, and to conflate violence with the very difficult work of seeking justice to be done and building a better world. Indeed, it is precisely in these moments that sound decisions reached in open deliberation with other thoughtful, compassionate decision-makers are most needed.” Martinez’s full remarks are available here.
Fact-finding through the fog of war.
Many of us are experiencing information overload, or what Sam Wineburg calls the digital “fog of war.” Wineburg, PhD ’89, professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Education and author of Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online, offers four guidelines for seeing through that haze. Step one, he writes in an opinion piece for the Detroit Jewish News, is to be honest with yourself: Most of us cannot tell whether a video in our feed is real or a deep fake. Wineburg outlines what else to consider when you come across a sensational headline or post—including a reminder for those who use Google to try to confirm what they’ve seen. “Remember, Google is a search engine, not a truth engine,” he writes. “Its algorithms pick up on the slightest scent of bias in your search terms and will, accordingly, issue what it thinks you want—reliable or not. Don’t just click on the first result. Scan the full set of results and make a wise first click.”
But wait, there’s more.
Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies features ongoing analysis of the Israel-Hamas war.
How do we talk about this? Stanford’s Office for Inclusion, Belonging & Intergroup Communication offers a step-by-step guide to approaching challenging conversations.
The stressors are very real—headline anxiety among them. Sleep, food, and get-togethers can help.
Robyn Sue Fisher, MBA ’07, the owner of Smitten Ice Cream, awoke on October 25 to the news that her San Francisco storefront had been vandalized in an incident that is being investigated as a hate crime. Fisher, who is Jewish, plans to reopen, telling the New York Times she has received support from the community, including from a fellow San Francisco small-business owner who is Palestinian American. “There’s love here,” he wrote to Fisher. “I choose that.” When asked what she’d say to the person who vandalized her store, Fisher said, “I would invite them to have some ice cream with me.”
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