Northwestern administration announced a new mandatory bias training called “Building a Community of Respect and Breaking Down Bias” in a Feb. 20 email. The training has been subjected to both approval and scrutiny from students.
A week after the training was announced, NU’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace posted jointly on Instagram calling for a boycott of the training. The groups pointed to biases in the training, including in the definition of antisemitism and a featured map of Israel.
The training features video modules that discuss University policies, changes to the Student Code of Conduct and antisemitism. One module discusses biases against Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities, which was made in partnership with The Inclusion Expert, LLC. Some modules also require the student to confirm and agree with University policy.
According to the email, the training modules are mandatory for all NU students and should be completed on an annual basis.
In the email, NU administration stated that the implementation of the training “will adhere to federal policy including President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order, ‘Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.’”
“(The) training module introduces Northwestern’s Guiding Principles, explores what drives racism and discrimination against Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis and Arabs, and provides information about University policies and reporting options that promote respect and understanding,” the University wrote in an email to the NU community.
Weinberg senior and NU Hillel President Sari Eisen, who completed the training, said she was pleased to see the University addressing issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. Eisen said it’s good for college students to learn about hate and bias.
She said she found the training does a good job explaining where Jewish people come from, a brief history of Israel and the Jewish people, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“(The training) approaches this topic from a relatively factual point of view, which is important in a bias training — to not introduce bias into the bias training,” Eisen said. “All students should have to go through this training and think about how it relates to events on campus and events out in the world.”
However, Eisen’s opinion is not universal.
Flyers were posted around campus that discourage students from completing the training. The flyers read, “By completing the training, you are consenting to (the University’s) actions and giving up your right to protest!”
“These trainings represent an increasingly concerning pattern of University administrators preemptively complying with the Trump administration,” said a JVP member, who asked to be anonymous for fear of retribution.
Both the JVP member and a Palestinian student, who also wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, criticized the training for including biased information.
“This training is just so horrible for so many reasons,” the Palestinian student said. “By essentially making us do it, they’re forcing us to consent with information that’s false.”
In the module entitled “University Discrimination, Harassment, and Religious Accommodations Policies,” the University cites a definition of antisemitism endorsed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, consistent with the definition the federal government uses.
Though the IHRA explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic,” critics of the IHRA’s definition state that, in practice, it has been used to label any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The JVP member concurred with this sentiment.
The University did not respond to a question asking why the University adopted the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism.
SJP and JVP condemned another module entitled “Antisemitism: Here/Now” because it was created in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund, a Chicago-based humanitarian organization. NU Hillel is an initiative of the JUF.
JUF states it advocates for “foreign policy issues affecting the safety, stability, and security of Israel.”
“I believe that this demonstrates that the University has no regard for genuinely combating antisemitism, but instead tokenizing the Jewish community and weaponizing antisemitism to continue to repress any and all pro-Palestine activism on campus,” the JVP member said.
The antisemitism module features a hand-drawn map that loosely depicts Israel’s borders. The Palestinian student said they felt the map includes Palestine as part of Israel.
“(The map is) meant to be a visual aid. It is not meant to be a political entity,” said JUF Vice President of Campus Affairs Emily Briskman. “As we’re talking to people about general areas and general things, it was honestly meant to just be a help, so people get a geographical idea of what’s going on.”
The map of Israel includes the Golan Heights, which was annexed by Israel and is considered by most of the international community to be occupied by Israel. The U.S. became the only country to formally recognize the Golan as Israeli territory in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term.
In an email statement to The Daily, Briskman wrote that the Golan Heights has been part of Israel since Israel “won the territory in 1967” and is recognized by both Israel and the U.S. The University did not respond to The Daily’s question about why the Golan Heights was included as part of Israel on the map.
Near the end of the module, the training compares statements from anti-Israel activists to quotes from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, stating that all the quotes were antisemitic.
“One of the quotes is something like, ‘As a Jewish person, I reject the conflation of my Judaism with Zionism,’ which is pretty akin to JVP’s talking points,” the JVP member said. “They equate that to being the same thing as the KKK, which is one, wrong, and two, deeply offensive.”
NU is requiring students to complete the training by April 7. The University did not respond to a question about the consequences for students who fail to complete the training.
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