As part of Haverford College’s ongoing Meeting the Moment: Community in Dialogue series, the Anti-Defamation league gave a workshop for students, faculty, and staff titled, Antisemitism 101 with the Anti-Defamation League. The workshop was led by ADL’s Philadelphia Regional Director Andrew Goretsky, and Senior Associate Regional Director Randi Boyette. Held in the Bryn Mawr Room of the Haverford Dining Center, the workshop covered the mission of the Anti-Defamation League, a brief history of Judaism and the evolution of antisemitism, and its impact in the modern day.
The workshop took place during the Dining Center’s lunch hours on Monday, September 30; students were required to sign in at a desk in the lobby, and were given a ticket to hand to a second pair of ushers stationed at the next doorway. Campus Safety officers were posted along the path to the workshop location, and the Director of Bi-Co Campus Safety, Lillian Boroughs, stood outside the event while attendees were ushered in. Students, staff, and faculty continued to filter in until about five minutes past noon, when the workshop was scheduled to begin. A title page of the ADL’s slideshow was on display: “Fighting Hate,” it read. And underneath, “Antisemitism: What is it? How is it Manifesting Today?”
Many members of the Haverford College administration, who have worked to manifest the Meeting the Moment initiative, were present, including President Wendy Raymond and Dean KcKnight. Dr. Nikki Young, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, introduced the ADL members after pausing for a moment of silence.
Goretsky moved to the front of the room, began the presentation, and almost immediately, yells could be heard from outside the windows – a protest against the ADL held by a Bi-Co group, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), had begun. Throughout the ADL’s workshop, the chants, banging on windows, and clanging of pots and pans was audible, making the atmosphere noticeably tense.
Goretsky and Boyette proceeded with the workshop through the muffled disturbances, beginning with a encouragement towards effective dialogue: “ “We live in a world of you either like something, don’t like something, or don’t engage [sic],” Goretsky asserted, “but that doesn’t allow for … nuanced perspectives.” The workshop moved through lessons on Jewish history to the progression of antisemitism, from Medieval blood libels to the struggles of current-day college students. Goretsky told attendees the story of a particular college student he had spoken with who tried to join an environmental group on her campus. Upon walking into the first meeting with a Star of David necklace, and mentioning that she was Jewish, the student was asked by peers whether she was a Zionist. When she said yes, the group would not allow her to continue acting as a member. Goretsky noted that “The Jewish identity remains tied to the ancestral Jewish homeland for many.” Criticism of Israel, he said, isn’t and shouldn’t be silenced, but “when you demonize Israel, when you call for it not to exist, [that’s antisemitism.]”
When Goretsky began the section of the workshop focused on anti-Zionism, he made it clear firstly that there are differences of opinion on the topic, and that he was there to share the ADL’s. He further noted, “I want peace, dignity, and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians … [and] safety and equity for all … I want all extremism abolished.” Being pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, he said, are not mutually exclusive stances. As for himself, he said, “I disagree with Netanhayu. I probably shouldn’t say this, but if I were an Israeli citizen, I wouldn’t vote for him.”
Early on in the presentation, a student who had been sitting at a table in the front of the room stood up, and pulled off a gray sweatshirt to reveal a red t-shirt with the words “NOT IN OUR NAME,” and “JEWS STAY STOP ARMING ISRAEL” across the front and back. “I’m gonna stop you right there,” they said loudly, pulling a sheet of paper out of their pocket to read a statement disparaging the ADL and voicing the concerns JVP had made clear in their letter to the administration, where they cited various news outlets such as The Guardian and Ebony.
Goretsky and Boyette stood silent before Goretsky offered to “be loud and speak over it,” though the disruptor’s voice grew ever louder as well. Dean McKnight quickly made his way towards the disruptor and began to speak to them quietly. Failing to persuade the disruptor to leave the room, he laid a hand on the student’s shoulder, to which the student replied, “you don’t need to put your hands on me, that’s alright.” Dean Mcknight removed his hand and continued to speak in a low tone while the disruptor continued to read their statement. The situation escalated when an attendee of the workshop sitting near the disruptor tried suddenly to grab their piece of paper from their hands. The two struggled for a moment, knocking over a chair and knocking the seated student’s chair off balance such that he had to grab at the table to right himself. At that point the disruptor seemed to know it was time to go. Dean McKnight successfully led them out the back door of the room. A short silence followed, broken by Gorestky’s voice: “It’s a tough time,” he said.
JVP began circulating a letter of protest to the Haverford community after promotion for the ADL workshop was underway, joining a “nationwide campaign to Drop the ADL.” The letter was signed, sometimes anonymously, by 48 students. Organizers with JVP also met with Dean McKnight and Dr. Nikki Young prior to the event to articulate their concerns. Dean McKnight told the Bi-Co News, “That was really wonderful dialogue. They made clear what their concerns were, we understood and expressed resonance in terms of what they had shared with us and then we also articulated what some of the challenges were and that this ADL event was meant to be one in a series of opportunities to learn about and think about antisemitism.”
JVP, of course, did not stop at this form of protest. In the course of the ADL’s workshop, four other student activists stood up to disrupt the presentation and read statements. The second proceeded much like the first, and was eventually led out of the room by Dean McKnight and Lillian Boroughs. The third was allowed much less time before being first spoken over by Goretsky, and second, cut off by Dean McKnight, who, after this third interruption, took a microphone and made a statement to the audience at large. He noted that two-way dialogue is necessary, but that there is a “time, place, and manner” for all kinds. Given that, he opened up the room for statements from anyone else planning to disrupt the event. “You may have 30 seconds to speak,” he said, and paused. A fourth student then stood up, to the sound of exasperation from some attendees. This fourth interruption continued for approximately the allotted 30 seconds, but was cut off again by Dean McKnight, with the statement “Alright, this is not dialogue, this is not educational, please leave the room.”
Haverford Professor Barak Mendelsohn posted multiple responses to the disruptions on X, including this statement: “Instead of showing disrupters severe consequences, they were invited in by administrator (w/o speakers’ consent). Adding insult to injury, they were allowed time to spew their hatred to people there to learn about antisemitism not to experience it.”
Mendelsohn was not in attendance at the workshop, but compared the disruptors to KKK members speaking in a workshop on racism: “Imagine allowing KKK members to speak in workshop on racism. At Haverford College all standards disappear when Jews are involved.” Mendelsohn declined to speak with the Bi-Co News in connection with this article.
Over a week after the workshop, Dean McKnight sat down with the Bi-Co News. Asked for comment on the method by which student protestors chose to protest, and why he marked it as “not dialogue,” McKnight replied, “My response in the moment was that, you know, that wasn’t dialogue, because in the moment there was not any interest among the people in the room in actually hearing what they had to say, so that was what I was referring to. However, what I think is absolutely the case, is there continue to be dialogues now as a result of that disruption in the room about the ADL, about — unfortunately I think people are more concerned about campus dynamics than they are the actual content that was being expressed that day, and that’s what I was concerned about. So, students have the right to demonstrate, they have the right to express themselves freely, the manner in which students chose to disrupt that particular event made the dialogue about campus disruptions and not about the content of what the real disagreement is over, which is defining antisemitism and responding to it.”
A student organizer with JVP, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of potential backlash, noted that though they had planted these disruptors in the audience, there were also students present who were not a part of JVP but had coordinated with them to ask questions at the presentation’s close. The organizer said their goal was, in part, “to show folks the degree to which the Zionist folks were not willing to discuss with us – now I understand that can sound hypocritical,” they said, “but we did have folks inside, who were trying to ask difficult questions, which is what good dialogue is supposed to be about, and from what I understand, the ADL hosts was unwilling to answer difficult questions about Zionism.” They continued, “We know that the ADL’s position is more or less to – with their money and with their power – to silence [anti-Zionists]. And our goal wasn’t to give them a second chance; I think they’ve had a couple chances over the past century. The goal was to show the people who came, thinking that this was going to be these cool people who want to engage in dialogue, that when we try to do that they’re not going to do it. I think … the ADL is somewhat past the point of … an appropriate reception of good-faith dialogue attempts.”
Asked what their response was to complaints lodged about intimidation and now feeling more frightened on their own campuses, the organizer replied, “I don’t want to delegitimize fear. Regardless of what you’re fearful of, fear in itself has negative consequences on one’s life, and is hurtful. That said, I hope that people who feel threatened and fearful and hurt by certain atmospheres can understand how what is worse and more fearful than an atmosphere of certain rhetorical ‘this or thats’ is the legitimate, credible threats that the ADL makes against specific peoples. I think when you have such a divisive political [discussion] going on, you’re going to have various perspectives on it, who are going to feel unsafe and threatened. You can’t make everybody happy. The question is, who is being threatened more? I think that’s a statistic with a pretty easy answer to acquire.”
As a result of their actions, disruptors are going through disciplinary processes. According to Dean McKnight, there is a resolution process underway to determine possible sanctions on student disruptors, due to complaints lodged by parties whose identities he was not at liberty to divulge. Three main breaches of policy were most concerning to administration members and those lodging complaints: the repeated disruption of the ADL speakers, the intimidating banging on windows and building, and finally the fact that prior to the event, someone had zip-tied the blinds to remain open in the room, which, McKnight said, constitutes tampering with the building in ways that could create unsafe conditions.
The student who attempted to grab a disruptor’s paper from their hand, and was surreptitiously taking photographs of every disruptor on their phone, has also met with members of administration about his conduct. McKnight is not at liberty to speak about the students’ personal disciplinary process, though he said, “that response [grabbing the paper, taking photos] in the room absolutely is considered by the Dean’s Office to be an escalation. That is also concerning …There have been conversations with that student as well.”
The JVP student organizer we spoke with made it clear that this process of disciplinary action is just part of protest: ““Whenever you’re doing organizing, there’s always a threat that the powers that be are going to turn their hand towards you and that you can never fully diminish that.”
Asked whether JVP would have done anything differently, especially considering that some received the protest as diverting attention from the crucial issue to more narrow and campus-specific politics, the student organizer we spoke with said, generally, no. There are always some small elements of organizing which could go more smoothly, they said, but “tangibly … I was very pleased with how it went. Other folks in JVP were very pleased with how it went.”
McKnight, however, has regrets. Reflecting on the week post-workshop, he said, “since that event, I’ve spent the majority of my time reacting to a lot of people who were in the room, outside the room, sort of somehow connected to that event wherever they may stand on what happened – some people were very tolerant of the kind of demonstration that was happening outside as well as inside, but most people in the room for the event were not only not tolerant but felt it was a breach of community trust and they felt intimidated, harassed … so I’ve been spending time – not just me, lots of people – have been spending time thinking about the campus community and those dynamics as opposed to having the dialogue about the content of the issue. And that is what it is — I’m just stating factually that that’s now what we’re spending time on as opposed to, had there been other approaches, perhaps we might have made it farther along in the ongoing dialogue about antisemitism on campus.”
He continued, “I think a lot of what happened made sense. JVP made some posts on social media about its stance, and provided information about the ADL and what they were upset about, and I think some people had not heard that information before, and some people maybe who wanted an opportunity to question [the] ADL’s practices now can do so as a result of the information they learned from JVP. I don’t take issue with that. I don’t take issue with the protest that happened outside – well, most of it. It was an attempt to draw attention and awareness to what that group of students felt was inappropriate about what the ADL was sharing. So, no problem with any of that, [but] the disruption inside the room and then of course some of the banging on the windows and walls outside the building again shifted the dynamic from one of awareness-raising and educational exchange and dialogue towards more feelings of questioning safety and security, and now people feeling like there’s hostility directed towards them as individuals or as a group and so that’s the part that I regret.”
The Haverford College Meeting the Moment initiative is making a point of inviting speakers with differing perspectives to campus. On October 23rd, less than a month following the ADL workshop, a lecture will be held, titled “Judaism Does (Not) Equal Zionism: Exploring American Jews’ Complicated Relationship to Israel/Palestine,” given by Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion Emeritus at Temple University.
The JVP organizer pushed back on the suggestion that this method could foster effective dialogue. “The issue that JVP takes with inviting the ADL and then inviting [Rebecca Alpert] and saying like, ‘oh, well now the scales are balanced’ is like — the biggest problem with the ADL isn’t their rhetoric, but is their ability to use violence, to fund violence, to surveil, to take away peoples’ power against their will in physical and tangible ways, which I would assume the speaker later in the afternoon did not have the power to do.” The organizer refers here to another event which took place the same afternoon as the ADL workshop, Presented as part of the Cooper Series at Swarthmore College, co-sponsored by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Haverford College Departments of History and Religion. The event featured Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History at UC Berkeley, giving a lecture on “Overwriting Palestine: Genocide and Denial in the 21st Century.”
What is the merit, then, of creating a space for dialogue between groups of people who each believe the others are actively trying to commit violence against their culture, religion, and/or country?
“Dialogue is different from other forms of communication in that it’s not about convincing the other side that they’re wrong,” Dean McKnight said. “It’s about gaining deeper, greater understanding and appreciation for where the other person comes from, trying to deepen a sense of human connection with others. So even if I completely, vehemently disagree with what somebody is saying, my humanity sees their humanity and recognizes that it matters to them deeply, and that’s not easy to do. It relies on people having skills that they have to develop in active listening. It requires a level of emotional intelligence, and it also requires some trust building … This is a really hard moment to be asking people to engage in dialogue … and yet, our mission as an institution of higher education is to create opportunities, right? And that’s what the Meeting the Moment initiative is trying to do, to create opportunities for ideas to be expressed, challenged, questioned, rejected. And all of that can happen in an institution of higher learning.”
Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly stated that Professor Barak Mendelsohn was an attendee at the ADL workshop. In fact, Professor Mendelsohn was not in attendance, and his online commentary relating to the event was based on information received from an attendee.
