The next message from Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin was emailed to the campus neighborhood on Nov. 2, 2023.

Pricey campus neighborhood,

I’m writing to share what’s, to my thoughts, a very considerate assertion ready by faith-based and neighborhood leaders who’re on the UW-Madison Heart for Interfaith Dialogue’s Religion Advisory Council. In it, they identify a pressure we’re feeling acutely on our campus proper now: the duty to make sure the precise to free speech whereas concurrently acknowledging that sure types of legally protected speech may cause vital emotional hurt to members of our neighborhood.

The leaders, representing a variety of religion traditions, urge us to “communicate freely, however with humility,” and to “act strongly, however don’t hurt.” Whether or not or not you’re a individual of religion, I’m grateful for this name and echo the feelings of the message.

These smart leaders remind us that “when passionate advocacy leads individuals to ignore the security…of others, free speech may cause critical hurt.” Please take a second to learn their assertion in full.

Learn the religion chief assertion

We discover ourselves in terribly difficult occasions. Many members of our neighborhood – significantly these with ties to Israel, the Palestinian Territories, or different components of the Center East – are experiencing acute emotional ache, worry and nervousness. Quite a few Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim college students, college and workers have misplaced family members or have members of the family or individuals pricey to them whose properties have been destroyed or who’re in bodily hazard.

In separate conversations I’ve had during the last a number of weeks with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim college students and Jewish and Israeli college students, some have advised me that they’ve skilled worry on our campus, or in Madison, based mostly on their identities. Jewish and Israeli college students have advised me about having emotions of unease carrying a Star of David necklace or a kippah. And Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim college students have shared related discomfort with carrying a keffiyeh or hijab. And a few in every group have advised me that they’ve skilled worse – individuals calling them names, or, in a single occasion, throwing issues at them. College students have expressed feeling that a few of those that disagree with them vehemently about politics have additionally ceased to see or acknowledge their basic humanity.

Antisemitism is profoundly flawed, and we should condemn it forthrightly and with out equivocation. Within the wake of Hamas’s terrorist assaults in Israel and the more and more deadly conflict in Gaza, we’re seeing, nationally and globally, an alarming rise of antisemitism, and our campus is just not immune. Studies of anti-Islamic and anti-Palestinian incidents have additionally elevated, and this too is a horrible flawed that should be resolutely condemned. Let me be clear: Nobody ought to ever be attacked or disparaged based mostly on their faith, identification or fatherland.

I acknowledge that now we have additional challenges as a result of the train of lawful free speech and protest rights throughout a time like this additional raises tensions and stokes worry. As a public college, the First Modification applies to us straight. It’s illegal for us to limit protected speech, even when it feels ugly or dangerous. Now we have heard many requires us to silence or punish speech that’s, in reality, nonetheless clearly constitutionally protected.

Whereas protest is a crucial factor of free expression, I ask all of us, as members of the UW–Madison neighborhood, to train our treasured rights to free speech with cautious consideration to the ways in which phrases and actions can divide us and be intimidating.

As I and members of my management workforce have had a number of conversations with college students linked to the impacted Center East areas and representing a variety of identities, we witnessed ache, however we additionally noticed spectacular power. We heard a strikingly related name from all of them: please acknowledge our basic humanity. The scholars stated, in their very own methods: Even for those who disagree with us concerning the politics of the Center East, don’t deal with us as lower than human. Acknowledge our pleasure in our heritage and our identification. Acknowledge that we – and our households and our communities right here and internationally – matter, and that we’re struggling. And these college students, to a fairly astonishing diploma, had a real sense of empathy for what their classmates who had completely different religions and completely different politics had been going by means of now.

That is what I ask us all to attempt to do, even in these terribly fraught occasions: acknowledge one another’s humanity. I ask us all to be delicate to the truth that lots of our college students are scuffling with these international occasions in very private methods. And I ask us all to work to search out connection throughout distinction, even when that’s terribly troublesome to do. One of many college students with whom I met this week adopted up after our group’s assembly with the next aspiration, a prayer of kinds, which I share with you now:

“Events abroad mustn’t compromise our dedication to compassion and empathy in direction of each other. Let’s try to be a college that reshapes the narrative on this matter and promotes a message of hope, unity, and love.” 

I perceive that this scholar’s plea is not any straightforward feat in such difficult occasions, but in response, I say, amen.

Sincerely,

Jennifer L. Mnookin

Chancellor

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Sources for the UW–Madison Neighborhood