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Earlier this semester, a number of faculty on our campus organized a “teach-in” to address growing concerns over the Trump administration’s recent executive orders and presidential leadership. Entitled, “Freedom from Fear: American Democracy in the Trump Era,” these sessions ran in 30-minute blocks from 9 am to 4 pm with faculty from a wide range of disciplines – sociology, political science, English, economics and criminal justice – covering topics such as Islamaphobia, right-wing populism, fascism, truth and rhetoric, sanctuary cities, and immigration. One of my Religious Studies colleagues, Dr. Jennifer T. Kaalund, and I gave a presentation titled, “Criminalizing the 'Other' - The Creation of Enemies and the Corrective of Catholic Social Teaching.” Our intent was to demonstrate how the recent executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” (signed 1/25/17), with its stipulation to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens,” echoed similar attempts to create criminals out of people considered to be “other.” In our remarks, we referenced examples from Germany’s run-up to World War II and newspaper coverage of the “Central Park Five” case in 1989. In the first case, the newspaper Der Stürmer warned of a Jewish program for world domination and published “crimes” committed by Jews. One article “Who is the Enemy?” (1934 issue) blamed Jews for destroying the social order; the tag line on every issue’s opening page read “The Jews are our misfortune!” In the second case, a number of New York newspapers ran headlines such as “Wolfpack’s Prey” and “Wild Savages” to describe the five Black and Latino boys (between ages 14 – 16) accused of raping and beating a 28-year-old woman, Trisha Meili, as she jogged in Central Park. At the time, Donald Trump purchased full-page ads in four New York newspapers calling to reinstate the death penalty (even before the boys had their day in court) to “serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.” (New York Times 5/1/89) At the end of our presentation, Dr. Kaalund and I fielded some questions from students attending the day’s sessions. One student stood up, let’s call her Anna, and commented that she was insulted and disheartened, not by the presentation, but by the reaction of students behind her who were, in her view, disruptive and disrespectful during the teach-in, making it difficult for her to learn. She voiced her concern that students were wasting an opportunity to learn something new, perhaps because the content challenged their political views and assumptions. Things got heated very quickly. One of the students sitting behind Anna, let’s call him Will, wasn’t going to be “called out” without a response. Our time was up, but he refused to comply with repeated requests to continue the conversation in another venue. I had to escort him out of the auditorium with the promise that I would give him an opportunity to speak his mind. I had no idea what to expect. When the three of us – Anna, Will and I – sat together (I made sure I was strategically positioned between them), Will admitted that he had reacted quite strongly to how I had, in his view, equated Trump’s executive action with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Once that connection was made in his mind, everything else was less than credible. He simply shut down and proceeded to carry on the conversation with his friends seated with him. Anna asked him, “Why didn’t you raise your hand when you had an opportunity to share your question with the presenters?” Will thought it would be a waste of his time and he wasn’t as invested in the process of engagement at that particular moment as was Anna. He wasn’t prepared to share publically what he was more at ease sharing privately: that religion, in particular, Catholicism, had nothing to say in response to the executive orders; that everyone has the right to their own political views; and that “you might have a Ph.D. but I can believe you’re wrong.” He heard something he didn’t want to hear after which he foreclosed the possibility of learning altogether. A number of things were learned from this encounter. First, the faculty who organized the next teach-in built in more time for questions and discussion. It was clear to us that we needed to provide a space for processing the information shared at the teach-in; it was our responsibility to model with and for students what civil engagement can look like. Second, we developed a list of norms for civil engagement that were shared at the beginning of each new teach-in session and at the onset of the Q&A period so that everyone in the room would be mindful of the commitment to listen openly and speak respectfully. Finally, we organized fewer sessions the second time around, so as not to overwhelm students with too much information all at once. While I learned from this particular teaching moment, I must admit that the entire encounter saddens me as I reflect upon it.  I did not mention the racial and gendered dynamics of power and privilege in the mix – myself and Dr. Kaalund as two women of color faculty, Anne as a student of color and Will as a white male student –  but I believe these dynamics were operative and had much to do with a willingness (or lack thereof) to listen. In fact, this is what is encountered in the religious studies and theology classroom all the time, even as we try to steer so far away from it. In addition to the content of the encounter between religion and politics, as loaded as that is already, I believe this demonstrated the need for our constant vigilance and mindfulness – indeed our moral obligation – to keep religion and politics at the forefront of our public discourse. I agree with Roger Gottlieb when he said, “…it is morally unfair and psychologically impossible to expect religious citizens to check their values at the door when they enter the town meeting of democracy. Religious authority must not directly translate into political authority, but a religious perspective has as much – or as little – of a role to play in shaping our vision of our common life as any other.” (Liberating Faith [Rowman and Littlefield 2003], xix) The question for us, in the Trump era, is whether we have the courage to sustain that necessary engagement alongside our students, in and out of the classroom.

Two German Language Instructors discuss their collaborations via the GLAA program. Source.

Every time I walk into a classroom or workshop for the first time, I hear the voices of elders in the long, Black-led struggle for justice pressing the questions: “How are you going to bring people into the movement? How are you going to plant the seeds and bring forth a revolution of values?” My thoughts are always about what it means to model the just peace of  the society that is and has yet to be. The orientation I bring to the classroom or workshop space is one of religion and nonviolent social change focused in civic engagement and social action. The tasks and challenges we face today in the religious studies and peace studies classrooms are not unlike those faced over the past several decades. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “Breaking the Silence: Beyond Vietnam” sermon 50 years ago. In the sermon King called us to a “revolution of values.”[1] The revolution of values is a move away from a thing-oriented society toward a human-oriented society. It helps to create a society where everyone has their needs met and no one is oppressed. King was speaking out against the value the United States placed on the evils of racism, materialism, and militarism. According to elder Grace Lee Boggs, a revolution of values and building up the Beloved Community, are "about redefining our relationships with one another, to the Earth and to the world; about creating a new society in the places and spaces left vacant by the disintegration of the old; about hope, not despair; about saying yes to life and no to war; about finding the courage to love and care for the peoples of the world as we love and care for our own families.”[2] The recent wave of political and social violence against Black and Brown people, women, queer, non-gender conforming people, and religious minorities is not new. It is just more overt. The risks of talking about religion, politics, and the politics of religion in the classroom are high. We see friends and colleagues being labeled “dangerous.” Yet, our tasks as teachers are to critique and improve society. We do the emotional and complicated work of instilling in our students' religious literacy, a political consciousness, and a sense of calling. A large part of moving students to political consciousness and calling is the idea that human beings are all connected to one another, to the past, to the ancestors, and to the future. In other words, becoming politically conscious is to move toward the understanding that who I am is related to who you are. Simultaneously, the move toward calling presses the idea that what I do is related to social responsibility. Ultimately, what I believe about and how I live has consequences for others. In my courses, religious literacy becomes a tool for moving students into a new political consciousness. Students learn about the beliefs and practices of a variety of religious traditions and the political implications of those traditions. Along the way, students are given the opportunity to reflect on their own beliefs and practices. The pedagogical tools I have found useful in the endeavor to create a revolution of values and a new political consciousness are: Be authentic and present. I try to think of my teaching in terms of a pedagogy of relationship and community. I spend time during the first weeks of a semester allowing students to get to know one another. I treat classroom spaces as community spaces. As the professor, this means being vulnerable and transparent. Students know when a teacher is not being real. I cannot ask students to share their personal stories and experiences without being willing to do so as is appropriate. Make it real. I ask students to reflect on why religious literacy and political consciousness are helpful in their work, their relationships, their vocation, and in their civic engagement. If students can make the material relevant to themselves they are more likely to take it with seriousness. Making it real means exposing students to practitioners and the stories of real people. Teachers having their limits and being transparent about those limits allows students to see do likewise. Be clear about the end goal. If the point is to move students toward a revolution of values, then we must develop a pedagogy of transformation and hope. Too often religious and political discourse is about what we are against. In the words of elder Vincent Harding, “No matter what form education may take . . . I am convinced that one of its most important responsibilities is to nurture the realization that we can change our lives for the better, that another creative, more democratic way of life is possible, that the seeds of such a new way are already alive within us, needing to be nurtured.”[3] In these times the stakes are very high. How are we bringing people into the movement? How are we planning the seeds for a revolution of values? What are working toward?  [1] King, Jr., Martin Luther, “Beyond Vietnam,” Available online at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam. Accessed March 8, 2016. [2] Boggs, Grace Lee. “The Beloved Community of Martin Luther King.” May 20, 2004. Yes. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-conspiracy-of-hope/the-beloved-community-of-martin-luther-king. Accessed August 14, 2014. [3] Harding, Vincent, and Daisaku Ikeda. America Will Be!: Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy. 2013, 174.

From Dewey (How We Think [Boston: D.C. Heath,1933]) to Schön (Reflective Practitioner [New York: Basic 1983]), and most recently Palmer and Zajonc (The Heart of Higher Education [New York: Jossey Bass 2010]) and Barbezat and Bush (Contemplative Practices in Higher Education [New York: Jossey Bass, 2013]), reflective practice has a long pedagogical history, especially in clinical training. Reflective practice calls for revisiting one’s past or present experiences in order to analyze, reconsider, and mine the learning in them for use in the future. Reflective practice is increasingly being employed in higher education along with the use of contemplative practices as a means by which to increase student use of critical thinking skills and embodiment of “competence, compassion, collaboration, and a tolerance for ambiguity in the face of uncertainty” (Peterkin, 3). Portfolio to Go offers a multitude of questions that encourage deep reflection on clinical and personal experiences by students in healthcare training programs. Although some prompts refer specifically to clinical and medical settings (for example, “Describe the hospital corridors at 3 a.m.” [80]), most deal with far broader settings (“Write a story about the last time you were yelled at” [42]) and could be used by students in a wide range of disciplines and in classroom or small group settings. Peterkin encourages their use primarily in reflective writing such as journals, critical incident reflections, or stand-alone assignments. He identifies writing as a tool that increases awareness of feelings and thoughts about one’s work, but also as a vehicle that deepens critical thinking, enriches ethical insights in complex situations, and encourages development of one’s professional identity. Inclusion of reflective writing in student portfolios provides professors or future employers a glimpse of personal and professional learning and identity formation over time. Although Peterkin intends the book for students, it would be useful as an educator’s guide to the inclusion of reflective assignments in clinical courses. In the opinion of this reviewer, the most valuable parts of this book are the chapters that coach and teach students how reflection and storytelling can maximize professional growth. The chapters include how to critically reflect in one’s writing, how to move from reflection to actionable practice, how to form and participate in a reflective writing group, and how to deal with internal criticism. In one chapter, Peterkin differentiates criticism (negative) from critique (positive) by noting that the former finds fault, notes what is missing, and attacks the writer, while the latter identifies strengths, looks for possibilities, and is honest but kind. In the chapter on moving from reflection to action, the author notes simple but profound elements of clinical visits that students often struggle to implement such as asking open-ended questions (“what would you like me to know about you?” or “what is one thing you haven’t asked me, yet?”), listening for patient concerns and fears, noticing metaphors in conversation and using them to expand understanding, and being aware of body language (standing, sitting, touching) and how it impacts relationship. Educators often find assessing reflective writing and discussions difficult because of the personal and vulnerable nature of reflection. Peterkin offers a very useful rubric (118-120) that provides ways by which to measure levels of participation and reflection. Portfolios to Go is a helpful volume for any educator interested in exploring the value of reflective practice and in including reflective assignments in a classroom or clinical training program.

The National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan invited contributors to this volume to share work that “pushes the edge of [the] latest conceptualizations of diversity” (xiv). Scholars of education, sociology, organizational leadership, policy studies, communication and speech, and social work contribute to the book’s study of  “diversity issues in higher education,” offering a range of disciplinary vantage points (xvi). Diversity, the volume argues, is a natural state, not a problem to be eliminated. The book invites readers to consider multiple diversities in order to avoid generalizations that hide the complexities of difference. An introduction and conclusion outline how higher education has approached diversity over the past century (for example, as a variable to be controlled, a goal to be achieved) and point toward avenues of continued research. The book’s subtitle points to the volume’s claim that attention to the details of demography and democracy (“the arrangement of the distribution of power”) is “central to…public and political discourse” (226). Chapters appear in pairs, with the first in each set written by accomplished scholars who have “entered their professional careers after the twentieth-century framings of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, nationality, and ability have lost their authority” (223). These primary chapters address: diversity at historically black colleges and universities; college access for low-income students; inclusion of LGBTQ students; pathways to college for Latin@ students; the experience of space on campuses for students of color; disability; media influences; and Black male student athletes, African American female faculty at community colleges, and the mandate rhetoric of historically black colleges and universities. Reflections by graduate students form the accompanying chapters and develop from interviews with each author. These secondary chapters highlight each author’s “research and career trajectory” and attend to topics including social agency and the power of resistance, the value of uncertainty and the need for nuance, visibility, the value of alternate vantage points, racial battle fatigue, and safe spaces (13). Together, the paired chapters provide engaging research and unique insight into scholarly agendas and motivations. Religion appears in a handful of unexpected places in the volume. Biblical notions of the diversity of creation as a gift provide the editors’ first example of diversity as a productive good, not a problem to be solved (1). Reference to the Black church as a positive influence on educational attainment appears in an interview with one of the book’s contributors and another interview includes note of a Bible verse that summarizes the scholar’s sense that divine help supplements human effort in working toward the creation of safe spaces (119, 204). A primary chapter investigating religious diversity in higher education would have enriched the volume. Though undergraduate classrooms and campuses are the main focus of the book, for those who teach in graduate programs (whether secular or religiously-affiliated) the volume offers insight about the prior educational landscapes that shape students who pursue advanced study. In addition, the text draws attention to the complexity of diversity alongside the need for students to understand potentially negative implications and for instructors, researchers, and institutions to recognize blind spots.

In my last blog, I reflected on my regret about the way that my classroom had become politicized in an election season in ways that I came to regret. Unexpectedly, I find myself once again politicizing my classroom; towards different ends this time. This time my act of radicalization is not so much about policy differences as about precluding a future which I would wish for none of my fellow citizens, much less my students. As I awake each morning, nowadays, I do so with the lurking fear that if we, as a nation, are not careful the morning sun may arise on an America which my grandparents knew. Theirs was a world of authoritarian regimes and dictatorships here in the United States, not in far off lands. Jim Crow was quite simply a dictatorship; one based, albeit on race, but an authoritarian regime nonetheless. This personal history of my folks, along with the programs of genocide carried out against Native Americans, and the relocation of Japanese Americans to places just shades shy of concentration camps leaves me little illusion that it could not happen here. The it being the rise of an authoritarian regime which uses genocide and ethnic cleansing as a means to gain and maintain power. I am not at all convinced that we are not in such a moment. Nor, am I naïve enough to believe that large numbers of our fellow citizens would not welcome such a development believing foolishly that only they would be its beneficiaries. So, for me, the question each day is how do I, as a teacher, work to preclude this future in favor of one in which we all have a place? I forget. Having learned that to simply make a political argument runs the risk of creating a fissure in my classroom which precludes the imagining of a common future, I now do simple things to resist what I know to be the ways of authoritarianism. Writ large in this resistance is my willful forgetting of my student’s names. A forgetfulness which requires that each class session I must ask them to reintroduce themselves, where they are from, and in some form give voice to their hope and aspiration for our future. This is done in differing ways but the shape and intent remain stable. While I realize that I run the risk of seeming doddering and not attentive enough I am willing to accept these assessments. My willingness comes from my understanding of how authoritarian regimes co-opt people into ways of being which they would normally find unrecognizable. The most common way is to constrict the public square in such a way that people can only enter and leave it at the cost of the personal identity of themselves and others. Public identity is then mediated wholly on the terms of the regime. A thumbnail way to think of this is that individual selves are subsumed into a super-self that then robs them of their identity as individual persons, and most importantly as moral agents. It is this collapse of the public square that I seek to counter through the continual invitation for students to re-inscribe themselves in and on the public square which is our classroom. By the time we have “re-introduced” ourselves the room is so full of stories and our hopes there is little room for a super-self to emerge. In this, I attempt to cultivate the habits of being and mind for my students which intuitively resist invitations to lose themselves for the sake of a grand future for some of us at the expense of others of us. A future which has no place for my neighbor is a future not worth having and one which demands acts of faithful resistance, no matter how small.

I was scheduled to write a blog post on teaching about controversial issues and how they are shaping contemporary Muslim identities in North America. Guessing, however, that many readers may be fatigued from the barrage of unfavorable events – from the U.S. travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries to a horrible attack on a mosque in Quebec – I have decided to dedicate this particular blog to one of my favorite pedagogical tools for inspiring hope as well as a lasting sense of personal connection to the subject matter: the telling of a story.  Storytelling is one of the oldest techniques that human beings have used to teach one another. From pre-Islamic times to the present day, all Muslim societies have been shaped by orality in the form of tales, fables, myths, legends, and narratives. As I have emphasized to my students, there are many purposes for storytelling: for spiritual and moral guidance; for creating a sense of the supernatural, the metaphysical, and the existential; for inspiring learning, wonder, and adventure; for critiquing self and society; and for reinforcing historical narratives, in ways that can create positive social identity as well as stereotypes, prejudices, and even a basis for ongoing conflict. Whether I am teaching an introductory course on Islam or a graduate course on Sufi expressions of Islam, some of my greatest moments in class are when I share with students a story of my living experience of traveling to particular places in the Muslim world. For this blog I would like to share a story from a visit to Egypt more than a decade ago, as a window into diverse aspects of Arab and Middle Eastern culture (I also sometimes share this story when lecturing on traditional Islamic cities). While my particular story will differ from the stories other instructors will use in their own teaching, I hope that the manner in which I communicate different realities and experiences will prompt others to harvest their own distinctive experiences, and consider which aspects of those experiences might be richest in content for students – particularly those whose ideas about Muslim-majority and Middle Eastern societies are abstract and largely gleaned from news and popular culture.   In 2003, I had the honor of planning and coordinating a conference at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. After the conference was over I lingered in Egypt for a number of days, and on my last day I wanted to go shopping for books on Sufism in Cairo. (I would share with my students that Cairo and Damascus have long been two of the greatest cities in the Middle East for finding and buying books on Sufism.) A list of books in hand, my husband and I went from one bookstore to another and then another until we finally encountered, at the very back of one store, a beautiful elderly man who wrote and then recited the following sentence on a piece paper: “You must find Abdul Rahman at 5:00 pm in Azbakeya.” Inspired by this new lead, we set out to find Azbakeya but no one knew where it was. Finally, after much searching, we found it – an area in Cairo where there were booksellers of every kind, clustered in row upon row of small metal shacks. Somewhat daunted about where to start, we began to ask where we might find Abdul Rahman. As so often happens in the Middle East, many people were willing to stop, listen, and try to help, leading us from one person to the next but still no Abdul Rahman. Eventually, though, we did find Abdul Rahman and promptly showed him the list. How long, he asked, would we be in Cairo? “We leave tonight,” we informed him. Hearing this, he physically closed his shack for the day and said, “Follow me.” Surprised by this turn of events and uncertain about exactly where we were going, my husband and I then started to follow Abdul Rahman through the busy streets of Cairo, swerving this way and that. The sunset prayer had just begun and people were bustling about – some going home, some praying on the street, and others on their way to whatever events they had planned for the evening. Abdul Rahman then did a strange thing. He climbed into the front passenger seat of a taxi cab and beckoned us to get into the back of it. Still unsure of our destination, we complied with his request and felt good about this new, unforeseen but promising development. As a professor once told us, “Surrender to the grace of the moment.” As we made our way down paved but dusty streets, we started to realize that our cab was approaching “the City of the Dead” (I would share with my students how this is an area known to be both one of the largest cemeteries in the Middle East and also a place where the poorest of Cairo’s poor find spaces to live.)  Abdul Rahman was taking us to his home. The cab dropped us off in front of a modest mausoleum building, and Abdul Rahman yelled up to the second floor where his beautiful daughter, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, was holding a baby. She peeked out, ran down to the front gate, opened it, and handed the baby to her father. We then entered the building and followed Abdul Rahman to his living quarters, where there were books on all four walls, and books in boxes as well as on top of boxes and tables. We could not imagine fitting more books into one space. Abdul Rahman then handed the baby to my husband before proceeding to search his stacks, and I thought to myself, “This is the first time I have seen my husband hold a baby and it was in the City of the Dead!” Knowing his collection well, Abdul Rahman moved efficiently from one stack to another and brought forth a stack of books on Sufism. Some, he pointed out, were hundreds of years old – for instance, an early edition of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Futuhat al-Makkiyyah. Even though we did not want to bargain – no easy task for us in any event, made somewhat more awkward by the circumstances – we then had to haggle for the books. (I would share with my students the social significance of haggling and the art to a good haggler!)  Soon, after a few purchases and some small talk about baby names (Abdul Rahman cited a hadith of the Prophet to explain his own preference for boys’ names starting with Abdul [meaning servant of a particular divine quality] and etymological variations on Muhammad [which translates literally as “praising and praiseworthy”]), it was time for us to leave. We had to get back to our hotel, check out, and then leave for the airport to catch our flight. Abdul Rahman went outside and hailed a taxi for us in the City of the Dead. While conversing with our young cab driver, we discovered that he was a Nubian, with roots in Egypt’s culturally distinctive south. Upon hearing that we had come from the United States, he smiled and, with a thumbs-up signal, articulated a single word with much drama: “Schwarzenegger!” We immediately grasped his meaning, though this was our first news of the matter: Arnold Schwarzenegger had won the election, becoming governor of California. Unable to resonate with his obvious excitement, we felt what might be described as the beginning stage of reverse culture shock. My husband and I looked at each other, and could read the same meaning in each others’ faces: “We are going back to that.” In an attempt to change the subject, we tried to steer the conversation to Egypt and Egyptians – so much hospitality, and so many amazing things to see. Our driver was happy to hear of our positive experience, and appeared to enjoy the exchange. Then about five minutes before arriving at the hotel our driver pulled over to the side of the road, and turned to us with a hand signal that every visitor to the country must learn within the first day or two: “Please wait just a minute.” He then hopped out of the car and left us in it! Once again we consulted intuition but things felt good and we “surrendered to the grace of the moment.” A few minutes later, our driver popped out of a small roadside shop, slid into the driver’s seat, and turned to present us with a single rose in each hand. He looked at us with light in his eyes and said, “Welcome to Egypt!”  Many of my students over the years have told me that this is one of the stories they remember. Like other stories, it beckons them to encounter the Muslim world with openness, wonder and awe rather than fear, perplexity, or prejudgment. With this story, I invite my students to enjoy the process of entering into the same sense of discovery experienced by a traveler abroad on some new journey, never quite knowing what to do or what to expect, but open to common humanity, curious about cultural nuance, and eager for the inevitable experience of surprise.