The Dialogue and Dignity Series kicked off the fall semester last week with a workshop on antisemitism and Islamophobia from Zack Ritter and Marium Mohiuddin, lead facilitators for Isma’/Shema Consulting.
The Dialogue and Dignity Series began last spring and was meant to offer spaces for conversation after a fall semester where student protest and faculty talks largely acted as the space for both dialogue and action. In a Jan. 11 email, sent just two days after the Board of Trustees chose not to divest from military companies supplying weapons to Israel, President Sarah Bolton wrote about the upcoming Series.
“The Dialogue and Dignity Initiative will start this Spring by bringing speakers and programs to campus that offer multiple perspectives on the conflicts in Israel and Gaza, as well as on the related issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Bolton said.
While President of Students for Justice in Palestine, Elle Palmer ‘25, sees conversations like this as important for a campus community, she was critical of the way the Series discussed these difficult topics.
“I think it does a real disservice both to Jewish students and also to Arab students, and I want to be very clear that not all Arabs are Muslim, which is a kind of reductionist narrative that gets pushed forward, and not all Jews are pro-Israel – actually we are seeing quite the opposite amongst our generation,” Palmer said.
For Palmer, an antisemitism and Islamophobia workshop is a safe way to talk about “conflict” without turning too many heads. Palmer says it allows Whitman College to claim that it wants to take action on forms of hate without moving beyond conversations, or admitting that these conversations are bigger than religious discrimination.
During the workshop, Ritter and Mohiuddin did point out that there have been higher rates of not just antisemitism and Islamophobia, but anti-Israel, anti-Palestinian, and other identity-based discrimination since Oct. 7. Alice Lanier, a student who attended the workshop, had good things to say about her experience.
“The workshop was very educational. Marium and Zach created an inclusive, very informative online environment to learn in and ask questions about a topic that brings many complex feelings and opinions,” Lanier said.
Dr. John Johnson, Vice President of Inclusive Excellence, emphasized in an email that the role of the workshop was meant to leave students feeling informed like Lanier.
“Whitman College strives to have and support a student body, staff, and faculty that represent the diversity of our world in a supportive scholarly community that prioritizes student learning within and beyond our classrooms,” Johnson said. “Workshops like these are part of a broad effort to build awareness and inclusive excellence competencies to create a campus where all feel affirmed and safe.”
Despite Lanier’s enthusiasm and Dr. Johnson’s hopes, only three students stayed for the duration of the workshop.
Nadja Goldberg, a senior who co-leads Kehillat-Shalom, a space for the Jewish community, offered some ideas about why attendance could have been so low.
“The Dialogue and Dignity Series feels like the College’s attempt to engage with the issue of the war in Gaza without actually addressing their material support of Israel. It’s a way to put on a front as though they are doing something when that’s not what the student body is asking them to do,” Goldberg said.
Palmer agrees, explaining that the series misses the point that students are continually advocating for.
“I think… students do kind of see through the facade of these DEI initiatives and the way that they’re very performative,” Palmer said.
Palmer also continues to address the workshop’s limitations.
“[The workshop tries to] conceptualize antisemitism and Islamophobia without actually addressing the ways in which the campus is complicit, the ways it has the power to divest from its direct complicity in funding and arming a genocide, and it also refrains from engaging in meaningful action or conversation about how it can support its own students,” Palmer said.
Both Palmer and Goldberg agree that addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate intensified by Oct. 7 and the ensuing genocide is important, but they suggest other ways of doing so.
Goldberg points to the work of students and faculty, which began long before the Dialogue and Dignity Series, as a way to adequately address forms of discrimination.
“The Power and Privilege presentation called ‘Judaism Beyond Zionism’ was a good example of beginning a conversation about antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Goldberg said.
They were critical of the inclusion of consultants when many members of the Whitman community have demonstrated the ability to lead these conversations.
According to the student leaders, the workshops and the Series more broadly ultimately act as an unnegotiated concession meant to reassert control of the narrative and diminish the possibility of student activism.
