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Campus conversations: Human connections in a time of war

Like thousands of other American college students, Mouctar Diarra felt compelled to speak up when the state of Israel mounted its campaign of indiscriminate collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023. For Muslims, Palestine had long been the ultimate transnational symbol of injustice,1 but this war on Gazans was unprecedented in scale. It fuelled the most disruptive campus demonstrations since the Vietnam War, as American students and faculty reacted to a military campaign verging on genocide, enabled by the unflinching patronage of the American state. A Muslim of West African parentage, 19-year-old Diarra was then in his second year at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. He was shocked by the news coming out of Gaza and upset at what he saw as the university administration's prejudiced reactions to pro-Palestinian activism on campus. But while protest was a natural way to express grievances in a democracy, it was not sufficient. The war of words needed to be accompanied by dialogue across difference, Diarra felt.

'I was angry that many influential politicians, celebrities, and media conglomerates didn't want to advocate for a ceasefire. I was angry that for the most part voices that supported Palestine were being suppressed,' he said. But he was not confident that he could persuade others to a pro-Palestinian point of view if he entered the 'performative space' of protest, with its screamed slogans and one-upmanship. 'I really wanted to have a dialogue,' he told me during his summer break at the end of that tumultuous academic year. He hoped to find people whom he could talk to without aggravating his fear and anxiety. He turned to Steve Kocher, a university chaplain and director of the Spiritual and Religious Life Center (SPARC). As a member of Penn's Muslim Students' Association, Diarra had gotten to know and trust Kocher, who served as an adviser to the various student-run religious organisations. He discovered that students from the 'other side' had also been in touch with Kocher, expressing the same desire for dialogue.

One of them was a Jewish freshman, Gabriel Greenfield, also nineteen. The 7 October attack, the deadliest on Jews since the Holocaust, occurred just weeks after he arrived at Penn. He had spent his gap year in Israel; he attended a music festival like the one that had just been turned into a killing field. Consumed by sorrow, fear, and dread, he was unable to focus on much else for one or two weeks. Meanwhile, reports were circulating about antisemitic hate speech. He heard about some students on another campus refusing to join Jews at vigils for the dead. Sentiments were swiftly becoming more polarised. He asked himself, 'How do we begin to, kind of, you know, work back towards something?' Greenfield describes himself as Modern Orthodox, and had attended only Zionist schools. But he had come to a large secular university for a reason. While he appreciated the 'awesome' set of values that he'd been raised in, he was aware that he'd had an 'insular' upbringing. Penn was a chance to broaden his perspective, he said.

These tentative longings for conversation and connection led Diarra, Greenfield, and three other Muslim and Jewish students to meet over a burger dinner at SPARC one evening that November. 'It was an incredible experience, kind of hearing for the first time from real people the experience that they were going through, and being able to express from my side what I was going through,' Greenfield recalled. Diarra initially felt disappointed that they did not discuss the war itself. But he realised that they had made an important first step. 'It was still tense, because we didn't know what each other was going to say. But by focusing on just our own emotions, and speaking candidly about that, I think that created a level of trust,' he said. 'I think it showed that conversation was possible, and that other students were wanting to initiate that conversation.'

The five students promised to meet again, and bring their friends. Their second dinner took place at the end of that semester. More followed the following semester. Greenfield said participants have respected the purpose of these dialogues as opportunities to share different perspectives in a civil manner. 'This isn't a place to convince people or to debate, and in each group, we have facilitators making sure that kind of the conversation stays in control. The intentions are to understand each other and not to convince each other.' Diarra admits being driven by a desire to advocate for his pro-Palestinian position. 'I sought out conversations because I was angry that people didn't outwardly seem as affected as I was about the humanitarian crisis,' he said. 'But I knew the best way to change people's minds was not through a perfectly crafted argument: it was through empathy and respect. In my view, the most convincing person is able to take a nuanced and grounded opinion and have the humility to be shaped by perspectives different from their own.'

Over the rest of the academic year, campus divisions only became more contentious and disruptive. Concerns about Islamophobia and antisemitism on campuses had already been growing before the war.2 The protests generated more strident expressions of hostility that heightened fears among Jews and Muslims. Under immense political pressure - which threatened public funding to their institutions - several universities called on police to remove protesters' encampments by force, imposing order at the cost of deepening divides. Still, students like Diarra and his collaborators continued to try to create 'a dialogue space that was inclusive of different perspectives', as he put it. When I spoke to him and Greenfield in the summer of 2024, they were already planning their next 'Breaking Bread' gatherings for the new academic year. Before these conversations, Diarra told me, he had not realised how much the trauma from the Holocaust contributed to Jews' 'existential fear'. He now understood better their need for safety and security, and their sense of solidarity with the Israeli government. 'So, yeah, I guess underestimated how much this was the case.' Greenfield, on his part, told me how the meetings had helped him understand that not all critics of Israel should be labelled antisemitic. He was also more conscious of the power dynamics on campus, where Jewish students enjoy more support than Muslims. 'Hearing how they kind of felt shunned by the administration at the beginning of that experience, how there were genuine fears of doxing, for example - something that we didn't think about. And people I know were doing the doxing. I don't even think they realised the damage that they could be doing to these people's lives.'

This student initiative is part of a broader movement on American campuses to nurture constructive conversations on divisive subjects. In addition to informal gatherings like the ones convened by Diarra and Greenfield, there are dialogue centres set up by universities, and programmes organised by specialised civic groups. This chapter looks at some of these innovations. The picture of civil disagreement, of students respectfully reaching out across painful ruptures, contrasts with stories that were making the news around the same time, of campuses at war with themselves. The news coverage did not exaggerate the depth of the polarisation caused by the war. Referring to events in the Middle East, a U Penn hate speech commission report said, 'The on-campus responses to these events have included controversy, protests, accusations, counteraccusations, and, this spring, encampments and their removal by the police, culminating in widespread concern for the wellbeing and cohesion of the Penn community.' But the threats and ultimatums, the witch hunts and shows of force, were not the whole story. Throughout this period, mostly unreported by media, there were students and faculty who tried to listen and learn, to understand rather than vilify.

Educating citizens

In theory, the modern university should be more amenable than most institutions to enlarging the 'we'. It is 'a site for free enquiry and debate, distinguished by its openness to dialogue and rejection of intolerance', in the words of the Magna Charta Universitatum, a charter signed by around a thousand universities across the globe. 'Universities are non-discriminatory spaces of tolerance and respect where diversity of perspectives flourishes and where inclusivity, anchored in principles of equity and fairness, prevails,' it adds.3 Such aspirations are associated with universities' truth-seeking mission, which requires that ideas be tested by exposure to other ideas. They are also rooted in the view that the university should advance the common good, nurturing citizens equipped for the responsibilities of collective self-government.4

However, universities have been saddled with other expectations eclipsing their role in citizenship education. The massive investment in tertiary education after World War Two - which increased the proportion of Americans of relevant ages enrolled in college from under 10 per cent in the 1930s to around 40 per cent by the end of...