Up to three dozen students who have refused to complete the mandatory “Building a Community of Respect and Breaking Down Bias” training may soon no longer be my classmates.
To try to understand why someone would choose to not watch the hour-long series of videos, even if it meant losing their standing at the University, I rewatched it this week.
While the training is imperfect, its benefits outweigh its flaws. Boycotting it accomplishes nothing besides demonstrating its necessity.
First, I do not claim to represent any Jewish person other than myself. Famously, we are a people with many different opinions.
I believe that Northwestern needs an antisemitism training. It should be viewed the same way as other mandatory trainings on sexual harassment or on social justice and inclusion, which I completed before I even started college.
If you need more convincing, here’s an illuminating statistic: As of April 2025, nearly two-thirds of Jewish students reported antisemitism as a somewhat serious or very serious problem, according to a Daily poll. Only a third of students overall agreed. These numbers — and this gap — justify the training.
Many Northwestern students come from places where there aren’t many Jews, and they might need some basic facts before they arrive on campus. It’s possible that the only information about Jews that someone knows before they come here is from the news and the internet — this training offers a fuller picture.
I doubt that the video in its current form will be able to greatly lower those figures of antisemitism or provide enough information for students to feel comfortable speaking about Israel on its own. But having it gives students a common foundation to discuss, which is better than none at all.
This foundation needs a building to stand on it. Further programming and ample class offerings on the subject are available to students, and they should eagerly seek these out. The training is not the entire conversation, but it is a start.
Moreover, if it were up to me, the training would have been created with input from professors and been treated with more scholarly rigor — I was left wanting to know more about some of the quotes and figures they cited.
Still, I find it appropriate that a Jewish organization like the Jewish United Fund weighed in. Jews should be able to define what discrimination against us looks like.
In a letter that some boycotters wrote to the University, they took issue with the fact that the video was created by an organization “whose partiality and alignment with Israeli State policy is unquestioned.” To this I’d say that many American Jewish organizations are Zionist because it is an accurate reflection of the fact that most American Jews are emotionally attached to the state.
While polling numbers differ, in 2020, Pew found that eight in ten American Jews said that caring about Israel was an important part of what being Jewish meant to them. In 2024, the American Jewish Committee found that 85% of American Jewish adults believed it was important for the U.S. to support Israel after October 7.
The letter also states that the video features a “harmful conflation” of Zionism with Judaism. But to deny this conflation would be to deny reality: Nearly half of all Jews live in Israel, and it is the only country in which Jews make up more than two percent of the population.
I do share the letter writers’ hope that the next iteration of training includes the history of Palestinians in the region in a similar way to how it treats the history of Jews. My Jewish ancestors longed to return to Israel after millennia of exile. It would be unfair to suggest that Palestinians would not share a similar longing less than a century after hundreds of thousands of them were displaced. They, too, deserve to have their attachment to the land placed in historical context.
Another worry, expressed by Jeff Rice in his column Wednesday, regards the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. I approach this with the experience of having worked with Jewish organizations, some of which work to implement this definition. Though I personally mostly agree with IHRA’s definition, I worry using it will have a chilling effect on speech, particularly for those who wish to criticize Israel’s policies. I suspect that it might dissuade rewarding conversations from beginning in the first place.
The inclusion of the IHRA definition, however, isn’t within Northwestern’s control. As the training writes, the adoption of the definition was consistent with a January 2025 executive order.
Despite these shortcomings, I implore my fellow students to complete the training. Having to sit through a 17-minute video called “Antisemitism: Here/Now” that expresses a mainstream Jewish position isn’t worth losing your status as a college student over. The fact that some students are willing to do so proves that the training is necessary in the first place.
I believe in few things as much as I believe in the power of learning as a way to build understanding. Learning doesn’t necessitate agreement. But it can build a sense of understanding, which, to me, matters more than agreement. The first step is a willingness to try.
Talia Winiarsky is a Weinberg senior and author of “Talia’s Take.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
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