White Nationalist Violence and the Religious Studies Classroom: Brief Reflections on a Response to a Shooting

In fall 2018, I taught a 100-level religious studies course called "Jews, Christians, Muslims" at the University of Kansas (KU). While we occasionally referred to current events throughout the semester, for example to the tensions in the Eastern Orthodox Church over Russian foreign policy in Ukraine, we did not generally devote full class periods to such discussions. The course seeks to introduce students to the scriptures, major interpretive traditions, practices, and histories of three religions, including their relationships to one another, and just covering the basics is more than enough to keep us busy. However, when the shooting took place at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh—the worst single act of anti-Semitic violence in American history—I felt that we could not hold class as normal and let the incident pass unmentioned.

I also felt, however, that there should be some structure to any discussion. Inviting students to simply share their feelings can be valuable, but it also runs the risk of falling flat if they feel intimidated, unsure, or insufficiently informed. I also had the nature and backgrounds of the student body to consider. Of the forty students enrolled, maybe 10 percent were Jewish. The other 90 percent were a diverse group, including Muslims, Christians of varying denominations, first-generation college students, international students, and so on. I didn't want the Jewish students to feel put on the spot. The students in the class were also intellectually and politically diverse, and I didn't want to seem like I was highlighting the event solely to score political points against the Trump administration. With these concerns in mind, here's what I did.

Two days before class (three days after the shooting), I emailed my students to let them know we'd be discussing the attack. I included links to news stories for optional preparation—one from the Atlantic with an angle emphasizing Jewish burial and funeral practices (a topic we had just covered the week before), one from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on a solidarity rally at Sixth Presbyterian Church, and Eric Ward's essay "Skin in the Game," which discusses the role played by anti-Semitism in white nationalist ideology.¹ The next day, I wrote to KU's then– Director of Academic Inclusion at the Office of Diversity and Equity, Jennifer Ng. She and I had previously met and had helpful discussions about other issues on campus as they might affect my course, so I thought she might have resources on this as well. I was particularly concerned that connections between the attack and the general political climate, which any discussion would have to draw of necessity, not be received by conservative students in a "partisan" way and cause them to shut down rather than participate. Dr. Ng provided some useful resources geared toward focusing the discussion around specific concrete educational objectives while at the same time acknowledging the emotional impact of the event.

In class, I said the discussion could go for as long as students wanted. I had my regular lecture prepared and was ready to move to it if they were done talking after fifteen or twenty minutes. I had them start with five minutes of writing their own thoughts/reactions when they heard the news—not to turn in for evaluation but just to reflect and get their thoughts in order. At first, I was surprised by their responses—except for the Jewish students, many had reacted by classifying the synagogue shooting as one among the numberless mass shootings that take place all the time in the United States, at schools, workplaces, and public places. Their initial lens was not religion or hate crime, but security "in general," gun control, and so on.

During the discussion, I did my best to discourage the pattern where I spoke after each student, although sometimes they had specific questions about empirical facts I had to answer. I had prepared just one PowerPoint slide, a screenshot of the killer's account on the social-media service Gab, in case...