Remarks to Board of Governors Regarding Summer Planning

June 20, 2024

I want to share with the board and the community the work we are doing this summer coming out of a difficult academic year, an academic year that presented challenges for higher education across the nation.

Many of the members of our community made meaningful, thoughtful suggestions for how to forge a path forward and I want to thank them publicly.

These groups include Chancellor Conway’s Advisory Council on Antisemitism and Jewish Life and Advisory Council on Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian Life, the Jewish Faculty, Administrators, and Staff group, another informal group of Jewish faculty members, faculty from Middle Eastern studies more broadly, the leadership of the Center for Islamic Life, Hillel, and Chabad, and so many others.

We have a world-class faculty, the most dedicated staff in higher education, and a student body unlike any in America. The input we have received from them shows the strength and caring of our community.

Last month, I testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce about Rutgers’ response to antisemitism. During my testimony, I reiterated Rutgers’ commitment to battling antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hatred in all its forms.

I approached my testimony with an open heart and an open mind.  I know that there are things we could have done better, and I know, too, that at every step of our journey we prioritized the safety of our students, the protection of our community’s First Amendment rights, and the foundational importance of academic freedom.

I expressed those principles to the committee on May 23rd and I underscore them to you today.

As I told the committee, I have committed to forming a university-wide advisory group to help us navigate campus tensions and to advise us on programming and how we articulate and demonstrate our principles. I am working with the chancellors now on the formation of this representative university-wide group.

Our executive leadership, staff, and faculty can all benefit from opportunities for training. Some of this training will need to be issue-specific—such as defining and identifying antisemitism and Islamophobia. Other training, some of which is already under way, focuses on dialogue across difference, especially dealing with polarizing issues in the classroom, and how to intervene as a bystander witnessing bigotry.

Last year our policies were tested by a combination of protests, hyper-polarized social media activity, and a handful of truly horrendous incidents of targeting. Rutgers is always reviewing its policies to ensure that they are sufficient for our current environment, and this summer is no different. The university is assessing our policies related to time, place, and manner of protests with the prospect of continued unrest in the fall.

We are also taking steps to make reporting on bias incidents more transparent. We are in a period of heightened reporting—and that is good. The university has made significant efforts to make it easy to report incidents of bias—because we know that often the hardest step in addressing wrongdoing is speaking up. We are working to provide insight for our community about reports we receive, their nature, and whether or not they are actionable.

All these steps are in addition to our work in responding to requests made by the students with whom we met in peacefully ending the protest last month.

So much of what we respond to involves our collective behavior as a community. Since I arrived at Rutgers, I have emphasized civil discourse and public service on behalf of the common good as the attributes I would like Rutgers to be known for. I will continue to advocate for them—now more than ever—and I will continue to use my office to position Rutgers as a national model for higher education.

To achieve this vision, our community needs to model the world we want: providing space for shared humanity, for understanding, for listening, and for fostering speech instead of discouraging it. It will be incumbent on each of us to lead the way.

You will hear more in the coming weeks about individual aspects of what I have shared today.