As antisemitic and anti-Islam sentiments continue to spread through college campuses across the country, one dean at USC is trying to keep campus a tolerant environment for all students.
“Even though people have different perspectives about what’s happening, what I see is the shared pain on campus, this shared sense of grief, this shared sense of seeing, feeling unseen, unheard, unsafe,” said Varun Soni, dean of religious and spiritual life.
In a letter published Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education wrote, “Hate-based discrimination, including based on antisemitism and Islamophobia among other bases, have no place in our nation’s schools.”
“Schools that receive federal financial assistance have a responsibility to address discrimination against Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist students, or those of another religious group,” the letter said.
USC has not been immune to that violent rhetoric or the violence that often follows the turmoil. Soni said he is here to help students of all religions and backgrounds navigate frightening and uncertain times.
It is no secret that USC students from the Israeli and Palestinian communities have been dealing with acts of discrimination. A video of a pro-Israeli economics professor went viral due to the comments he made at a pro-Palestine peaceful protest. Videos also went viral of students taking down flyers of kidnapped Israeli hostages.
Soni, who has been working at USC for 15 years, described his position as “essentially the university chaplain” and his role as to, “just be with our students to walk alongside them, to cry with them, to pray with them, and to help them express themselves in ways that they find meaningful.”
“This is an extremely difficult time for many students on campus, particularly Israeli and Jewish students and Muslim Palestinian and Arab students,” said Soni. “Antisemitism is at historically high levels on university campuses. We’ve seen Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate at levels that we’ve never seen before.”
Soni said that “behind closed doors,” his Israeli and Palestinian students, colleagues and friends are both “telling [him] the same thing.” He said that since Israel and Palestine are “very small place[s],” many people on campus are “grieving for people who they actually know.”
“It’s not just existential grief for many people on our campus. It’s personal grief,” he said.
Soni also mentioned that students are feeling lonely and wondering why their friends aren’t checking in on them.
“In some ways, they’re feeling a bit abandoned,” he said.
According to Soni, the two primary concerns of USC are free speech and public safety.
Soni added that he has seen students express themselves freely through visuals, teachings and gatherings.
“We haven’t had any, thank goodness, incidents of violence [on campus]. We have seen, not just hate speech, but hate violence on other campuses,” he said
USC works with DPS, LAPD and local law enforcement officers, and those public safety officials meet with students before events to, “make sure [we] are clear as to what’s happening so [we] can keep everyone safe.”
“There’s a difference between psychological safety and physical safety,” Soni said. “In the age of antisemitism and Islamophobia, it is totally understandable that people don’t psychologically feel safe.”
When asked about what USC is doing and could do further to support students in the Palestinian and Israeli communities, Soni said, “We’re meeting every day with people and we’re listening with open minds and open hearts and we’re trying to get better… There’s no template for this particular situation. So we’re all just trying to do the best for our community and get better in partnership with our community.”
Soni also added that he believed it is a “shared responsibility.”
“The best source of support that students have is other students,” he said.
Palestinian and Israeli communities across schools in California have also been facing discrimination on campus.
At Stanford University, a black S.U.V. hit an Arab Muslim student and yelled “F you and your people,’’ and drove off. The student was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening.
In a message to the campus community after the incident, Stanford University wrote, “Stanford is continuing to work to provide a safe and secure campus environment,” and that additional security has been “deployed at key locations on campus”
At UCLA, Pro-Palestinian students were beating a piñata with an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the chant, “Beat that f–king Jew.”
In a message to the college community, Gene Block, chancellor of UCLA issued a joint statement with the University of California President Michael V. Drake and the UC chancellors, who he joined in, “issuing a forceful condemnation of incidents of bigotry, intolerance and intimidation that have taken place on UC campuses — including UCLA — over the past several weeks.”
“In our diverse university community, even if we disagree with someone passionately, we cannot devolve into dehumanizing them with rhetoric, treating them with prejudice or jeopardizing their safety,” Block wrote.
At UC Berkeley, a law professor wrote an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal titled, “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students.” Students on campus have now reported that they have been threatened and doxxed, and have been wearing masks while attending protests due to the fear of being captured and posted on social media.
U.C. Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol Christ, sent a message to the Berkeley campus community saying, “We will not tolerate our students harming one another. Disagreement and differing points of view are an essential part of campus life, and we expect that you treat one another with the same respect and dignity that we are modeling here.” The message also shared several resources for students who had been threatened or harassed.
For Soni, USC President Carol Folt’s words helped to capture his sentiment on the matter.
“Encouraging all of us to be civil, to be respectful, to be compassionate, to be supportive, to see each other as Trojans, to see our own experiences and each other, I think that’s absolutely the right message,” Soni said of Folt’s comments. “And if it’s just the university’s responsibility, we can only do so much. But if it’s a shared responsibility across the university community, we can do so much more together we can be better together.”