In June, two committees – the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian (MAP) Communities Committee and the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias – released reports from their seven-month inquiry into the experiences of their communities before and after the events of Oct. 7, 2023.

Members from these two committees discussed some of their work at an event on Monday, Oct. 28, hosted by the Stanford Political Union (SPU).

Speaking on their experiences serving on the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Communities Committee were Professor Alexander Key and staff member Natalie Jabbar, and professors Jeffrey Koseff and Larry Diamond discussed their work on the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.

SPU President YuQing Jiang, ’25, introduced the afternoon discussion, titled “Confronting Bias at Stanford,” as a chance to model healthy disagreements, bridge divides, and aspire to community. “We hope this event will show students that not only is it possible, but necessary, to engage in discussions about difficult issues in a constructive manner at college and beyond,” he said.

Jiang first invited the speakers to explain their committees’ origins and goals.

Key, who served as co-chair of the MAP Communities Committee, shared how the committee was initially formed to explore how the university can talk and learn effectively about Palestine, but upon further discussions with university leadership, their remit was expanded to include the Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab experience as well and to provide recommendations to improve their communities’ experiences on campus.

Panelists reflected on how many of their committees’ recommendations extended beyond their own communities, providing suggestions to broaden learning opportunities for everyone at Stanford.

Key cautioned against framing the issues the two committees explored as Islamophobia versus antisemitism, a perspective he reiterated throughout the event.

Koseff, co-chair of the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias with Diamond, said the two committees worked in tandem. While one of his committee’s goals was to provide recommendations on how to educate the community and take measures designed to reduce, eliminate, and respond to antisemitism, another goal was to find ways to further dialogue with the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities.

Koseff said he believed their report’s recommendations “transcend” the Jewish community.

“It affects the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian community, it affects the Israeli community, it affects all students at Stanford about how we reestablish the culture, values, and ideals that we believe this university was created for and stands for,” Koseff said.

Challenges

The panelists also discussed challenges they encountered while gathering their findings.

Jabbar described how the MAP Communities Committee spoke with around 200 people in various settings, ranging from group discussions to one-on-one meetings.

While it was hard at first to get people to share their experiences, once they knew there was a trusted space for them, they showed up to talk with the committee.

“Once they trust you, in a time of collective distrust, they start to open up,” Jabbar said, describing how people were afraid and confused.

“It was painful for them,” Jabbar said. “It was painful for many of us on the committee who were experiencing some of the sentiments that they were expressing to us. There was a lot of fear and a lot of distrust … [the reports were] all anonymous because everyone was afraid to have their name attached to their sentiments and that made our work very difficult.”

Diamond shared similar experiences in the work undertaken by the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which held some 60 listening sessions with faculty, students, and staff.

Diamond recalled one “surprising and very tearful incident,” where a Jewish student shared how they hadn’t encountered anything problematic. “‘No one has said anything antisemitic about me,’” Diamond recalled them saying. “And then the tears start forming. ‘But most of my friends don’t know I’m Jewish.’”

Opportunities

The event also included a discussion about the committees’ recommendations.

Jabbar outlined the recommendations from the MAP Communities Committee report, which included suggestions like cultivating vibrant discourse on campus, investing in new tenured faculty in Palestine and Arab Studies, and leveraging Stanford’s existing expertise.

“People felt like they were not represented in the rooms where decisions were being made that affected them and that is what we were trying to address,” Jabbar said.

Diamond shared some of their subcommittee’s recommendations, which focused on student safety, protecting free expression, and promoting mutual respect and tolerance. He noted a shared emphasis with the MAP Communities Committee on expanding learning opportunities and hearing diverse perspectives for all students about the Middle East.

In discussing differences, Key cautioned against unintentionally framing perspectives as binary, highlighting the risk of oversimplifying complex issues.

“A problem with dialogue training is it accidentally falls into the idea that there are two sides debating,” Key said. He was even worried that the event itself – titled “Confronting Bias at Stanford” – could fall into the problems binary framing presents, when really what each committee was trying to do was examine the nuances and complexities of incredibly varied situations that are not about “us” versus “them.”

Koseff echoed this, emphasizing the committees’ shared goals. “We’re talking about the same issues,” he said. “We might be talking in different ways. We might have different ways of trying to solve it, but we’re talking about the same thing.”

Key highlighted a concern with what he called the “neutral container” model, which treats the university as an impartial “container” with various communities within it, rather than as a unified body. He argued that this framework unintentionally pressures students to forgo parts of their identities and sense of self in the name of impartiality.

“This seems, on the one hand, to be … sensible management structure,” Key said. “But I think what we found is that it’s really kind of detrimental to both the community of the university and to the scholarly work at the university.”

Diamond said that for him, the most important principles outlined in the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias report were mutual tolerance and respect for pluralism.

There were moments of disagreement at the event as well.

For example, Key commended students’ efforts through last year’s sit-in to create spaces for the community to learn more about the conflict unfolding in Gaza, whereas Diamond believes there are other ways for students to engage in such dialogue.

The final part of the event included a discussion about the university’s response thus far and some of the encouraging changes to university culture.

Diamond applauded leadership for clearly articulating time, place, and manner rules on a new, dedicated website for Freedom of Expression. He was also heartened to see particularly the discontinuation of the Protected Identity Harm Reporting website and a replacement for reporting through Title VI.

Diamond also praised Provost Jenny Martinez’s long-standing promotion of dialogue across differences and expressed hope that Stanford students could begin some of this work before arriving on campus. He said he is encouraged by the Summer Frosh Civil Dialogues Program, which piloted discussions for some 40 incoming students to practice listening with curiosity and intellectual humility.

The two committees also shared how they hope to present and discuss their findings at the Faculty Senate. They each met with university leadership in October and will reconvene in January. While their formal work is complete for now, Jabbar said, “​We’re still here as trusted individuals for the communities to speak to.”

Related story

Two reports released on communities impacted by events of Oct. 7 and afterward

Two separate committees – the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Communities Committee and the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias – have each released reports from their seven-month reviews of what their communities have experienced before and after the events of Oct. 7, 2023.