Hofstra Horizons Spring 2024

HORIZONS HOFSTRA

SPRING 2024

president’s COLUMN

It is my pleasure to present the spring 2024 issue of Hofstra Horizons, which highlights the scholarly research of our exceptional faculty in the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, as well as faculty colleagues who actively participated in Hofstra’s 2023 presidential conference focused on the Barack Obama presidency.

The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the Kalikow School inspires myriad research opportunities, many that involve Hofstra students in faculty research.

The school is composed of several departments, including Economics, History, Political Science, and Religion, and offers interdisciplinary programs such as Africana Studies, Labor Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, and Women’s Studies. With a focus on preparing students for roles as informed and responsible citizens, the Kalikow School faculty engage students with social scientific inquiry and the knowledge and support to affect change.

Along with the Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies and the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, the school – named in honor of Hofstra alumnus and trustee Peter S. Kalikow – continues to build on Hofstra’s national reputation as a leader in presidential studies and policy.

Hofstra recently explored the legacy of Barack Obama. Scholars, journalists, government officials, and Hofstra faculty from various disciplines participated in forums and presented scholarly papers on key topics in the Obama administration. The research of some of these faculty is included in this issue of Hofstra Horizons

Congratulations to the faculty and students featured in the pages of this magazine, and to all whose research contributes to our knowledge and understanding.

Sincerely

President, Hofstra University

Research and Scholarship at Hofstra University

6

American Race Relations During the Obama Years and Beyond: Irony of Fate

12

The Moroccan Diaspora in the United States: How Much Political Engagement?

18

Combating Antisemitism in Europe in a Post-October 7th World

Susan Poser, JD, PhD President

Charles G. Riordan, PhD Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Sofia Kakoulidis, MBA

Vice Provost for Research and Sponsored Programs

Alice Diaz-Bonhomme, MSEd

Assistant Provost for Research and Sponsored Programs

26

Hofstra Religious Mapping Project

Connects Kalikow Student

Researchers with Nassau County Religious Communities

32

Grading the Obama-Duncan Education Record

38 Medieval Spain, a Thousand Years Ago

HOFSTRA HORIZONS is published annually by the Office for Research and Sponsored Programs, 144 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549-1440.

Each issue describes in lay language some of the many research and creative activities conducted at Hofstra. The conclusions and opinions expressed by the investigators and writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect University policy.

© 2024 by Hofstra University in the United States. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of Hofstra University. Inquiries and requests for permission to reprint material should be addressed to:

Editor, Hofstra Horizons Office for Research and Sponsored Programs 144 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549-1440 Telephone: 516-463-6810

provost ’s COLUMN

elcome to the spring 2024 Hofstra Horizons

This issue focuses on the research of faculty in the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, along with scholarly perspectives of faculty from other include Hofstra’s Religious Mapping Project, which has gathered data on 100-plus religious organizations and has created new connections between Hofstra and the Nassau County community; research on the reign of Fernando I of León-Castile, which explores the role of Queen Sancha and other royal women in medieval history; the rise in antisemitism in Europe and the U.S. since the October 7 attack on Israel, and its threat to civil rights and democracy; the role of Moroccan Americans in their home country, particularly with regard to their political and civic connections; expectations and Black representation during the Obama presidency, and the nature of racism in America; and an evaluation of the Obama administration’s record in education policy, including the Race to the Top initiative and Every Student Succeeds Act.

Faculty research enriches the academic life of the University, providing powerful and practical learning opportunities for our students, while positively impacting our community and society. Interdisciplinary research and community-engaged scholarship, two distinguishing characteristics of Hofstra, offer a rich platform for building learners.

I congratulate the faculty and student researchers featured in this issue of Hofstra Horizons.

Sincerely,

COLUMN

Research in the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs

s I complete my first year as dean of Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (HCLAS), I am delighted to present a sampling of original and innovative scholarship emerging from the faculty and programs in HCLAS’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs.

The Kalikow School was created in 2015 through the generosity of Peter S. Kalikow, alumnus of the Hofstra Class of 1965. Mr. Kalikow’s earlier philanthropic generosity established the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency and endowed the Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies.

The Kalikow School’s signature offering is an interdisciplinary major in Public Policy and Public Service, for which students develop individual policy concentrations and complete an internship for academic credit. Eight departments comprise the Kalikow School: Anthropology, Economics, Global Studies & Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, and Sociology.

Kalikow School faculty frequently participate in or collaborate with multiple HCLAS interdisciplinary programs that have a policy focus, including Food Studies, Labor Studies, International Affairs, Presidential Studies, Sustainability Studies, and Women’s Studies. And the Kalikow School regularly co-sponsors events with other Hofstra centers, programs, and schools, including the Center for Civic Engagement, the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and the School of Education. Many projects and programs provide opportunities for students to work as research assistants, often through specially funded opportunities, such as HCLAS’s Firestone Fellowships and the Rabinowitz Honors College Research Assistants Program.

Faculty in the Kalikow School shine as brightly in the classroom as they do in their research. For example, Carolyn “Rusti” Eisenberg, professor of history, made national news in March 2024 by winning the Bancroft Prize – awarded annually by Columbia University and considered one of the most prestigious prizes in the field of American history and diplomacy. In a statement from the Bancroft Prize selection committee, the jury referred to her monograph, Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2023), as “a sweeping, panoramic, and ultimately damning portrait of Nixon and Kissinger as architects of the wars in Southeast Asia.”

I invite you to peruse the pages of this issue of Hofstra Horizons to learn more about the exciting research happening at the Kalikow School.

Eva Badowska, PhD

Dean, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs

School of Education

School of Humanities, Fine, and Performing Arts

School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Professor of English

about this ISSUE

Research in the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs

This issue of Hofstra Horizons highlights current scholarship by Kalikow School faculty, as well as scholarship by faculty who participated in a recent signature event of the Kalikow School and Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency: Hofstra’s Thirteenth Presidential Conference: The Barack Obama Presidency – Hope and Change, which took place April 19-21, 2023.

Kalikow School faculty research examined in this issue of Hofstra Horizons includes the following:

Dr. Ann Burlein and Dr. Julie Byrne of the Department of Religion present highlights of two years of work in Hofstra’s Religious Mapping Project, which studies and seeks to build relationships with the large group of religious organizations in Nassau County. Students majoring in Religion and Contemporary Issues are actively involved in this project.

Dr. Simon Doubleday of the Department of History presents the collaborative research for his forthcoming book, The Kingdom of Leon and Galicia Under Queen Sancha and King Fernando (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), which examines monarchical leadership in 11th century Spain. This study of history, culture, leadership, and religion in medieval Galicia prompts instructive questions about governance and policymaking today.

Dr. Carolyn Dudek of the Department of Political Science presents current research on how the European Union and national government address forms or expressions of antisemitism in Europe. This research is supported by a grant from the ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Module Program, which provides funding for speakers, scholarship, and student research on the European Union.

Dr. Rosanna Perotti of the Department of Political Science presents current research on political engagement of transnational Americans in their countries of origin, focusing on Morocco’s outreach to Moroccan Americans. This work builds upon previous scholarship and teaching on U.S. immigration policy and civic engagement.

Scholarship by Hofstra faculty who participated in the Obama Conference includes the following:

Dr. Jonathan Lightfoot of the Department of Teaching Learning & Technology, and director of the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, and Dr. Aisha Wilson-Carter of the Department of Writing Studies & Rhetoric, and executive director for Equity and Inclusion, present complementary perspectives on race relations in the Obama administration. Dr. Wilson-Carter discusses the importance of representation following Barack Obama’s election as the first Black president of the United States. Dr. Lightfoot discusses the limitations of Obama’s leadership on issues of race and racism, and the need to move beyond “the irony of fate.”

Dr. Alan Singer of the Department of Teaching, Learning, & Technology presents a critique of the Obama administration’s record in education policy. He evaluates the 2009 Race to the Top initiative and 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act endorsed by Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

These essays illustrate the breadth of current research in the Kalikow School, including studies with direct policy relevance as well as analyses with policy implications for the present. The research presented here raises fruitful possibilities for future scholarship building upon these topics. We are delighted to share this fine interdisciplinary work with Hofstra and the larger scholarly and public communities.

Meena Bose, PhD

Executive Dean, Public Policy and Public Service (PPPS) Program

Director, Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency

Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies

Professor of Political Science

Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs

American Race Relations During the Obama Years and Beyond: Irony of Fate

Jonathan Lightfoot, PhD, Professor of Teaching, Learning & Technology, School of Education, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Aisha Wilson-Carter, EdD, Executive Director for Equity and Inclusion, Office of Equity and Inclusion, Hofstra University

Irony is an interesting concept. Whether in literature, film, or everyday life, a search for the irony of the situation can capture the imagination and keep one’s attention in anticipation of the outcome. At the dynamic intersections of race, religion, and politics, we seek to make critical connections between what people may expect to happen and what happens. It is at those junctures of incongruity where our curiosity about the factors that contributed to the outcome being different from the popular expectations that informed this study. Comic irony adds an

element of humor as it asks the question, “Did that firehouse just burn down?”

The irony of fate suggests an ill-fated cosmic destiny that appears to be out of our control and merciless to us despite our hopes and dreams for triumph. Thus, the title of our paper, “American Race Relations During the Obama Years and Beyond: Irony of Fate,” explores how race, religion, and politics were used to elect our first Black president and queries whether Black America benefited from having Black representation in the highest and

most powerful office in the land. If representation truly matters, then show us the receipts.

Our research sought to discover whether the dominant mainstream’s expectations of the Obama presidency were at odds with what marginalized communities expected, specifically the level of attention he would give to the advancement of racial equality and other social justice issues. To better grasp this dichotomy, we employed a qualitative research method in attempts to better understand the nature of the expectations held by a

cross section of American demographic groups. Survey data from various clergy, scholars, and politicians were analyzed to reveal a complex set of conflicting expectations for the first Black president of the United States of America.

This article seeks to capture the nuanced meaning of what Obama represented within a range of expectations for his presidency and reflects the focus of our respective interpretive presentations at Hofstra’s Thirteenth Presidential Conference: The Barack Obama Presidency – Hope and Change

of racialized spaces most of our lives, with a high level of comfortability. That is not to say we do not have our preferred spaces, but it also does not mean we are playing pretend in mostly white spaces. Some have argued against this premise, dwindling Obama’s relatability down to code switching for acceptance.

Many assumed because of his race that he would be a revolutionary progressive.

My President is Black! –Dr.

Aisha Wilson-Carter

To understand the full range of expectations, we must acknowledge that all Black people are not monolithic and there are numerous ways to represent what it means to be Black in America. Barack Obama continuously showed us who he was as a Black man, a biracial Black man married to a “Black from a distance” woman, as Melissa Harris-Perry described Michelle Obama (Harris-Perry, 2023). Throughout his campaign and during his administration, he presented as his authentic self, shaped by his life experiences. At times, that meant speaking bad Patwah in Jamaica; other times, it meant playing respectability politics. But it was never a show; it is a dance many Black Americans perform. Perfecting this dance is why we can seamlessly join in on a call and response at a Black church, lead a museum board meeting, play a round of spades at Aunt Pat’s house, and host a dinner party for our all-white colleagues in the same week. We Black Americans dip in and out

In our research, respondents from the Chicago area who had contact with Obama during his first campaign were the most critical of his progression as a national political leader, compared to Obama as a local churchgoer and community organizer. One such anonymous respondent stated, “He did NOT live up to my expectations. I watched him morph from a statesman with integrity into a pragmatist politician.” Many assumed because of his race that he would be a revolutionary progressive. However, he never campaigned as a Black revolutionary; he represented his version of Blackness, which of course was not in line with everybody’s

version of Blackness. Although he was confronted with the reality of limitations that all presidents encounter, which may be perceived as a metamorphosis, I still maintain that his ability to maneuver, adapt, and be relatable to diverse groups of people is quintessential to the Black experience in America. This is apparent when we study his interactions during his nearly 10 years in the spotlight; whether he was dapping up rappers or making the case for gun reform to oppositional congressmen, he did so with the same ease and level of comfort.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin during a photo line in the Blue Room of the White House prior to a reception celebrating African American History Month, February 18, 2016. Photo courtesy of the Barack Obama Presidential Library.

To peel back the layers of expectations for the first Black president, we have to disentangle from representation. In other words, we must detach it from who many may have wanted him to be, which I argue, was a projection of their own version or perception of Blackness. For context, I’ll make my point by framing what Barack Obama represented to me and my expectations for the first Black president. The day after the election in 2008, my best friend and I met at the gym as we always did; she was on the treadmill when I tapped her on the shoulder. She hopped off without stopping the machine and we embraced and shed tears of overwhelming elation, relief, and inspiration. We made it to the White House; I can only describe the feeling as finally feeling American. Understand that my father, both grandfathers, and two siblings served this country well, so for that to be the moment I finally felt a sense of belonging to my country can’t be downplayed as it is a crucial example of the role representation played in Obama’s election.

Melissa Perry-Harris, the keynote for the aforementioned conference, spoke of how his presidency was an open invitation to the White House for Black people, not just symbolically but very concretely, in ways that we had never experienced before or after. She reflected on the fact that unlike previous presidents, he did not invite Congress members over to hang out; instead, Obama invited community members, their families, Black culturists, and artists to come over to break bread and fellowship (Harris-Perry, 2023). What does this invitation in and being proud to be American really mean? As a young GenXer or old Millennial (depending on who you ask), it’s only fitting that I explain this through the lens of hip-hop.

The first song I played on my run after our embrace was “My President is Black” by Young Jeezy and Nas. They recorded the song the night Obama won the nomination; hence the prevalent theme was one of expectations. The hook of the song is the mantra “My President is Black” and Nas’ verse is a message to Obama

about how to proceed when, not if, he wins. He warns him to not let ego take over, and to remember where he came from. The video includes people of all races at a rally that harkens back to the “Fight the Power” video by Public Enemy. The rally goers adorn T-shirts that state “My President is Black,” signifying the meaning of that possibility for us all, regardless of race, age, or class. Young Jeezy says, “I may inspire thugs, but you inspire us all” and sends a warning that if anyone touches him, “we are going to the streets.” Obama isn’t Young Jeezy’s or Nas’ version of Blackness, but nonetheless he represented them.

After the election, Jay-Z recorded a remix to “My President” and he, along with Young Jeezy, performed it in D.C. on January 19, 2009, the night before the inauguration. In the first verse, Jay-Z states, “My President is Black, in fact he’s half-white. So even in a racist mind he’s half right. If you have a racist mind, you’ll be a’ight. My President is Black, but his house is all white.” The use of the possessive pronoun “my” in both versions of the song is indicative of the sentiment that for the first time many of us felt empowered to claim the U.S. president as our own. For many of us, the implication of never seeing ourselves in that position suddenly surfaced. Later, Jay-Z speaks affectionately to America, calling her “a pretty lady,” asking her to wave her red, white, and blue, and then, speaking to the common feeling of liberation and inspiration, he states “I was hot before Barack, now imagine what I’m gonna do.” And this is it, this is what I expected; I expected him to select Aretha Franklin to sing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the inauguration and Beyonce to sing at the inauguration ball. I expected him to party with Kerry Washington, Common, and John Legend, and I expected Black people, of all different types, to be in and out of

President Barack Obama sits on the famed Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum following an event in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 18, 2012. Photo courtesy of the Barack Obama Presidential Library.

the White House; these were my expectations, and he lived up to them.

This pragmatic expectation was expressed by respondents in our research. For instance, an anonymous participant reflected, “Obama was an amazing president in all the ways. I do think he had/has more than a touch of Black middle class respectability politics, though, that forms his language too often in diplomatic ‘both sides-ism’ that makes it hard to call out historic and present power dynamics. I hardly blame him, though. For one thing, presidents in general have limited actual power, and Obama’s time in the position was especially congressionally hamstrung.” Furthermore, to expect the first Black president of this country to lead us to the promised land of a post-racial America, is to completely ignore historical evidence.

Show me the receipts! –Dr. Jonathan Lightfoot

I am from Chicago, IL, and am still a member of Trinity United Church of Christ located on the Southside of Chicago. It is the same church where Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. married Barack and Michelle and baptized their children, and where they held membership until Barack was forced to denounce Wright and their membership during the 2008 campaign for president. The media purposely looped parts of Wright’s sermons where he condemned America’s history of racist treatment and racially discriminatory policies. To secure national support from white folks, Obama had to publicly explain his relationship with his mentor/ father-figure Jeremiah Wright and his relationship to a church that was rooted in Black Liberation Theology, which seeks to address the sacred and secular needs of Black people who suffer under white capitalist patriarchal oppression. Black Jesus, Black freedom, Black power, Black beauty, and Black

self-determination are core values that are taught and celebrated at Trinity UCC.

Although I remember seeing the Obamas in church several times, I did not meet him until he made a U.S. Senate campaign stop at Knox College in western Illinois, where I was a visiting professor. He made it a point to chat with every one of us in the room. I told him that we had a few things in common, which piqued his interest in me to inquire about our commonalities. I told him that we both lived in Chicago, were members of TUCC, and graduated from Harvard University (he was a law school grad, and I was an ed school grad). He exuded charisma and made you feel like you and he were best buds. He had earned my vote!

After beating Hillary Clinton to become Democratic nominee for president of the U.S. in 2008, Obama came to Hofstra University to debate John McCain. I was chosen to speak at one of the community satellite viewings of the debate. In my speech, I declared that Barack Obama owed the Black

southside of Chicago church community a debt of gratitude not only for helping him learn what it means to be a Black man in America but for helping him launch a political career that had brought him to the brink of assuming the head seat at the table of world power. His community organizing and strategic political maneuvers had paid off big time! The basketball swag he acquired came from the hood (the Black man hood) and complemented his natural charisma. His Black wife worked well to help him gain trust from Black women who are quick to give a side-eye to Black men who choose to date and marry only white women or anything other than Black women. He had established himself in the larger Black church community because he knew that having a solid Black base required a religious connection. Trinity UCC and Jeremiah Wright, in particular, were powerful and timely beacons of bold, unashamed Blackness and unapologetic Christianity. The biblical scripture found in Luke 4:18 captures the

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dance at the Commander in Chief Ball at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., January 21, 2013. Photo courtesy of the Barack Obama Presidential Library.

Barack Obama’s campaign and presidency were undeniably historic and momentous.

message of Black Liberation Theology well. It states: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; (New King James Version [NKJV], 1982, Luke 4:18).

Fifteen years later, I maintain my position that Barack Obama owes the Black southside of Chicago a debt of gratitude for their enduring support. However, today I would argue that he owes a similar debt to all of Black America for helping elect him president and remaining steadfast against the torrent of backlash he received from white nationalist conservatives and a core of racist trolls who could never support a Black person under any circumstances. They are the same white “Christian” evangelical group who established the Tea Party during his first term in office and incorrectly believe that the U.S. was founded as a white Christian nation. They are hostile to non-white immigrants from “shit-hole” countries.

It was nice that Obama completed his two terms in office without scandal, impeachments, indictments, and other such troubles. When the haters went low, Michelle told us to go high. The administration displayed dignity, grace, and respect. They may have

spent too much energy playing respectability politics such that there was no time and energy left to develop radically bold programs and policies that could make a real difference and improve the lives of Black America, the America that nurtured Obama’s ambition. Since it didn’t happen during his first term, many held out hope that it would happen during the second term. He was admonished to be Blacker during his second term and express his inner Jeremiah Wright since reelection was no longer an option. Seeds of the MAGA birther contingent had already made it evident that a strong backlash was coming. This was Black America’s last opportunity to prove that representation could truly matter.

Obama continued to serve cautiously by avoiding issues of race and racism, acting in a nonthreatening manner, and assuring white America that he was president of one America. He was committed to a brand of rising-tide leadership clumsily designed to lift all boats, be they black, white, brown, red, or yellow. In his book The Black Presidenc y, Michael Eric Dyson documented how on several occasions when Obama spoke to largely Black audiences, he adopted a scolding disciplinary tone with a theme of personal responsibility that blamed Black people for much of their condition, instead of the racist structures and systems that have operated to stymie Black progress for hundreds of years. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were fighting for the same basic civil and human rights for formerly enslaved Black people during the 1960s that were enacted a hundred years earlier (Dyson, 2016). It is hard to imagine that these icons in the struggle for freedom and justice would have been as tepid as Obama was had they been president.

I like to think that MLK and Malcolm X would have harnessed all the powers of the presidency to establish a commission to launch a third reconstruction built around a comprehensive program of reparations for the collective sins of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, police brutality, and mass incarceration. The insidious nature of racism that pervades the American institutional power structure must be rooted out. We have the requisite brain trust to transform housing, banking, health care, employment, education, gun culture, and criminal justice so they can operate in more safe and equitable ways for all. Obama should have exhausted all his presidential powers in the interest of Black America, which includes mainstream and social media, executive orders, pardons, and clemency. He could have focused on Chicago with the intent to make it a model of transformation for other urban areas to follow across the nation. We chose Barack Obama with great expectations because we believed that representation matters. We would have never chosen Uncle Clarence Thomas.

Barack Obama’s campaign and presidency were undeniably historic and momentous. Expectations for his administration and how well he represented Blackness is debatable. The hope and jubilation felt by even some of his harshest critics at the time of his election can be explained as a willingness to suspend belief, conjure up a new reality, and ignore historical evidence. When the fervor died down, it was clear, just as it’s always been, that with any considerable Black progress, white backlash was inevitable. In The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century (Joseph, 2022), distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph argues that it is time for a new

struggle for first-class citizenship and dignity for Black America, more powerful than those that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. He offers “revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol.” America’s first and second Reconstructions fell tragically short of their grand aims. A Third Reconstruction, he says, can revive the kind of hope that leads to real change. If we can only escape the irony of fate.

References

Dyson, M. E. (2016). The Black presidenc y. Unabridged. [United States], Recorded Books, Inc.

Harris, F. (2012). The price of the ticket: Barack Obama and the rise and decline of Black politics. Oxford University Press. Harris-Perry, M. (2023, April 19). How did the Obama presidency transform American politics? Leadership, policymaking and legacy. Thirteenth Presidential Conference: The Barack Obama Presidency – Hope and Change Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, United States.

Joseph, P. E. (2022). The Third Reconstruction: America’s struggle for racial justice in the twenty-first century. First edition. Basic Books.

Lincoln, C. E., & Mamiya, L. H. (1990). The Black church in the African American experience. Duke University Press.

New King James Version [NKJV], 1982, Luke 4:18.

Young Jeezy ft. Jay-Z. (2009). My President is Black, DC Mix [Recorded by Young Jeezy & Jay-Z]. The Recession, Def Jam Recordings. The Hits Collection, Volume One (2010). Def Jam Recordings and Roc Nation. Retrieved from https://open.spotify.com / track/7gSbqXLD5glv5w7giXInv f

Young Jeezy ft. Nas. (2008). My President is Black [Recorded by Nas & Young Jeezy]. The Recession. Def Jam Recordings. Retrieved from https://www youtube.com/watch?v=l0z _LSpLwh E

Dr. Jonathan Lightfoot is a professor in the Teaching, Learning & Technology Department at Hofstra University. He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago, a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Cornell University. His research agenda focuses on anti-racist/anti-oppression schooling, education and leadership for social justice; civil rights; school desegregation; and critical review of legal and public policy. He is the founding director of Hofstra’s Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice. In that role, he has led research and programming to promote engagement among local, national, and global communities that center “race” and racism at the intersections of diverse cultural and social justice issues. The center recently launched a podcast series, Critical Conversations: For the Culture. Dr. Lightfoot has led numerous workshops and professional development training at various school districts in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion. He received the Educational Advancement Foundation Inc. Salute to Excellence in Community Education Award sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), was honored by Hofstra’s Collegiate Women of Color as Professor of the Year, and received a Long Island Legacy Award from the Islip Town branch of the NAACP.

Dr. Aisha Wilson-Carter is executive director of equity and inclusion at Hofstra University and vice president of the nonprofit Long Island Strong Schools Alliance. In both roles, she guides DEI initiatives and strategic planning, and facilitates training and professional development for educational institutions and the private sector. She has spent most of her academic career as a professor, consultant, mentor, and communication fellow in the field of writing studies and rhetoric at Columbia University, Baruch College, and Hofstra. Her research centers on anti-oppressive education, academic support, inclusive pedagogy, equity, access, social capital, and anti-racist pedagogy. Dr. Wilson-Carter holds an EdD in Administrative Leadership from St. John’s University, an MFA in Creative Writing from City College of New York, and a BA in Mass Communications from Clark Atlanta University.

The Moroccan Diaspora in the United States: How Much Political Engagement?

Rosanna Perotti, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

On Saturday, August 20, 2022, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, then celebrating the 69th anniversary of the Revolution of King and People, delivered a televised message heard around the world by the nation’s 5 million émigrés. “Morocco needs all its sons and daughters today,” he intoned. “It needs all the skills and expertise of the Moroccan community abroad, either to reside and work in Morocco, or to engage in different partnerships, from the country of residence.” The Moroccan government, he said, would create “a lasting structural connection with Moroccan experts and talents

abroad” ... a “special mechanism” to “support their initiatives and projects.” The new government entity would stay in touch with expatriate Moroccans “on a continuous basis,” informing them of opportunities for investment. More importantly, after years of delay, the monarch seemed to be opening up a realistic chance that Moroccans abroad would at long last gain real political representation in the Moroccan government (“Full Speech,” 2022).

The king’s message catapulted through social media among the nearly 150,000 people of Moroccan

descent living in the United States.1 Several members of that so-called diaspora are members of my extended family. In recent years, Moroccan immigrants residing abroad – an estimated 10% of the Moroccan population – have been an important sustainer of Morocco’s economy. They are so important to the kingdom that they have been called the “13th region,” to parallel the 12 existing administrative divisions such as Casablanca-Settat, Fès-Meknès, and Marrakech-Safi. Would the king’s speech signal a shift from merely soliciting émigrés’ remittances, investment, and ideas, to giving

Moroccan Americans a real say in the country’s economic, social, and political development plans?

What interested me about this question is the fact that immigrants would expect to have a meaningful say in affairs at home, even years after they had laid down roots in the United States. Despite their deep cultural bond to their homeland, my own Italian-born father and grandfather never appeared to have had a desire to foster economic development in the land of their birth or vote in Italian elections once they had set foot in the United States. Any participation in affairs at home would have been seen by their native-born neighbors as a threat to immigrants’ integration into the political, social, and economic fabric of their adopted country.

But my parents’ generation immigrated at a different time, and in a vastly different context, with much less opportunity for communication and travel. Immigrants to the United States today are much more likely to participate in transnational political engagement –continued civic and political connections to their countries of origin. What’s more, modern research finds that civic involvement in immigrants’ countries of origin often leads to deeper civic involvement in the U.S., and vice versa (DeSipio & De la Garza, 174).

Moroccan immigrants offer an important case for study in this regard. They comprise a relatively recent immigrant group to the United States (see Figure 1); an older and larger emigration, the subject of much research, settled in France, Italy, and Spain starting in the 1960s. The Moroccan government has been particularly creative and innovative in engaging this diaspora in home-country economic development; Moroccans in the United States would have a particular role to play in this diaspora

engagement (Iskander, 2010). Morocco is one of the United States’ oldest allies, and a growing cadre of immigrants could help strengthen cultural and political ties. And finally, the Moroccan case can illustrate the role of emigrants in helping push a nation toward meaningful democratic reforms.

On sabbatical this semester, I am studying the Moroccan government’s particular form of outreach to Moroccan Americans. How does the Moroccan government seek to enlist U.S. immigrants in an ongoing relationship involving remittances, investment, and transfer of skills and expertise? Morocco has allowed dual nationality since 1958 and extends citizenship to the children of emigrants, showing a “determination to keep in touch with and exert some influence over the diaspora” (Bilgili & Weyel, 2016). What kinds of political rights do Morocco’s immigrants expect to exercise in their home country as they are courted to aid in the nation’s development plans? Do the expectations of Moroccan Americans differ from those of Moroccan immigrants in Europe? What role do immigrant advocacy organizations play in assisting the Moroccan diaspora in the U.S.? And what is the relationship between Moroccan immigrants’ political engagement in their country of birth and their political integration in their adopted country, the United States?

To me, studying transnationals is a natural way to bridge personal and professional interests. As a graduate student, I developed an interest in U.S. immigration policy, tracing the

Morocco is one of the United States’ oldest allies, and a growing cadre of immigrants could help strengthen cultural and political ties.

In addition to consultations with emigrants, the Moroccan government has held periodic consultations with foreign experts on equitable development. Dr. Perotti spoke on U.S. federalism at the historic Third Parliamentary Forum on Social Justice, hosted by the Chamber of Councillors, the upper house of the Moroccan Congress. Dylan Cahir (Class of 2015, triple major in political science, global studies, and romance languages and literature) attended; he was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer at the time.

negotiations that produced the landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. I continued to speak and write about U.S. immigration policy over the years, and as my teaching responsibilities in American politics and civic engagement deepened, so, too, did has my interest in the political integration of immigrants to the U.S.

The

Moroccan Community

in the United States

Moroccans are relatively recent immigrants to the United States, with an estimated 140,000 Moroccan-born people and their children living in this country in 2022 – nearly twice the Moroccan immigrant population recorded in 2010, and nearly 20 times the population in 1980. By 2016, about half of those Moroccan immigrants living in the United States had arrived here after the year 2000 (Migration Policy Institute, 2016). Immigration ticked up because of the Diversity Visa (DV) program established by Congress in 1990; the program allows “new seed” immigrants with a high school education and/or technical training to vie for 50,000 visas a year. Morocco has been one of the top beneficiaries of this so-called “lottery” in recent years, largely because it has had a historically low level of immigration to the United States (Tramsen, 2023; see Figure 2).

A growing majority of foreign-born Moroccan immigrants are U.S. citizens, and they naturalized at particularly high rates (71% in 2022), suggesting that many applied for U.S. citizenship shortly after becoming eligible. The states of New York, Florida, Massachusetts, California, and Virginia are home to the highest numbers of Moroccan Americans, with particularly

A program from the Third Forum of Moroccan Competencies Living in the USA, held in Marrakech in 2018. This program, sponsored by the Moroccan government in partnership with a U.S.based immigrant organization, featured panels and roundtable discussions among some 50 Moroccan Americans with skills in business, journalism, academia, and government, offering opportunities for inter-community networking and home-country/U.S. partnerships

high concentrations in New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. They are a tiny proportion of the U.S. immigrant mix (.3% of the total U.S. foreign-born population), and they are an equally small proportion (about 2%) of the total Moroccan diaspora, whose members are far more likely to be found in France, Spain, or Italy, which together account for 75% of the diaspora (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022; Migration Policy Institute, 2016).

Nevertheless, Moroccan Americans are rapidly becoming a politically important part of the diaspora, partly because of their high average educational attainment (vis-à-vis the earlier European migration) and their technical and business expertise and economic resources. As an example, Kamal Oudrhiri, a native of Fez, is Cold Atom Lab project manager and the Planetary Radar & Radio Sciences group supervisor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has played a key role in the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), the international Cassini mission to Saturn, the GRAIL lunar mission, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the Juno mission to Jupiter, and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Moncef Slaoui, an Agadir-born researcher and former head of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccines department, served as head of Operation Warp Speed in the Trump

administration and managed development of a COVID-19 vaccine. Despite these high-profile émigrés, because the American diaspora is smaller and American arrivals more recent, there is little information available in the literature regarding Moroccan Americans as a community (Gintsburg, 2016).

This U.S. migration has come at an important time in Moroccan political history. Since the accession of the current king, Mohammed VI, in 1999, Morocco has been moving steadily along a path of political and economic liberalization. As the Arab Spring made its way to Morocco in 2011, Mohammed VI promised sweeping constitutional reforms, including a more powerful parliament and a reduction of the monarchy’s power. He appointed a committee to draft a new constitution. That new constitution offered enhanced separation of powers, a more independent judiciary, and increased power for a prime minister elected from the plurality party. The king in fall 2017 called for a new development model, stressing specifically the desire to have greater local participation in plans for economic development. In his speech at the opening session of Parliament in October 2017, the king called for an end to regional inequities. “Our national development model no longer responds to citizens’ growing demands and pressing needs,” he said. “It has not been able to reduce disparities between segments of the population, correct inter-regional imbalances or achieve social justice” (Paul, 2017). Parliament was instructed to develop new governance structures, if necessary, to enhance public participation in devising regional development plans. Parliamentary leaders called for maximum participation from citizens, industry, and NGOs. Emigrants were expected to have a participatory role as well.

Fig. 1. Population of First- and Second-Generation Moroccans in the United States, 2010-2022

The Special Role – and Grievances – of Moroccans Abroad

The Moroccan diaspora is both geographically widespread and economically vital to the kingdom. Expatriates’ contributions account for 10% of revenue, ahead of official development assistance and foreign direct investments. Their mobilization has been an important part of Morocco’s economic development strategy since the time of independence (Hasnaoui, 2021). In fact, among immigrant countries of origin, Morocco stands out for its innovative mobilization practices, on the theory that a well-engaged diaspora can become an agent for socioeconomic development (Iskander, 2010; Bilgili & Weyel, 2013).

Government strategies for mobilizing émigrés have evolved over time (Drhimeur, 2020). During an initial phase, from the early 1960s through the 1980s, the regime approached Moroccans abroad as little more than temporary workers and providers of remittances. Morocco founded special agencies in its consulates and embassies in nations with large populations of

Moroccan workers. Political and social integration in destination countries was discouraged, however, and the relationship between the Moroccan state and expatriates remained paternalistic. Efforts by the Moroccan government to boost expatriates’ investment, spur return migration, and include returning emigrants in the nation’s development plans failed, largely due to the emigrants’ lack of trust in Moroccan government institutions.

In a second phase of state-emigrant relations starting in the early 1990s, however, Morocco began to recognize emigration as a permanent phenomenon and embarked on a policy of “courting” the diaspora. It created the nation’s first ministerial department for Moroccans residing abroad, as well as the Hassan II Foundation for Moroccans Residing Abroad. These institutions focused on cultural, educational, and social exchanges to deepen the bonds between overseas Moroccans and their home country. Moroccans abroad would be seen as potential investors, not merely senders of remittances. For the first time, the Moroccan government and

destination/host countries initiated joint programs to help address the brain drain.

In a third phase, starting in the 2000s, the mobilization of Moroccans abroad accelerated. When Mohammed VI ascended to the throne in 1999 at age 35, opposition parties were invited to participate in government for the first time. Mohammed VI paid special attention to migrants abroad; during the early 2000s, the government established the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME) and the International Forum of Moroccan Competencies Abroad (FINCOME). CCME is a national consultative institution consisting of Moroccan civil society advocates, members of the diaspora, and Moroccan government officials. FINCOME is a program of networking opportunities by which highly qualified Moroccans residing abroad can share scientific, business, and research information with Moroccan entrepreneurs and public officials at home. In 2007, Morocco organized a conference that resulted in creation of the Moroccan Invest Network and adopted a new strategy with three focal points: remittances, mobilization of competencies, and co-development, including the contribution of civil society organizations (Hasnaoui, 2021).

The change was welcomed by Moroccans abroad, and it came just as immigration to the U.S. was accelerating. CCME promised to hold consultation meetings with emigrant groups across a broader geographic reach, including the United States, identifying and analyzing issues relating to emigrants’ rights, citizenship, political participation, education, culture, and religion. CCME would help promote immigrant participation in the economic, social, cultural, and political development of Morocco (Drhimeur, 2020). The king invited Moroccans

abroad to participate in the drafting of the 2011 constitution. (Moroccans abroad were permitted to vote in the constitutional referendum from outside the country, but participation rates were low.) The president of the CCME sat on the commission in charge of the constitutional reform process. In the end, the new constitution reaffirmed “the country’s will to preserve and advance human ties with the kingdom, as well as to increase their contribution to Morocco’s development” (Article 16).

It recognized the rights of citizenship of Moroccans residing abroad, including their right to vote and be elected (Article 17). It ensured broad participation of Moroccans abroad in the country’s advisory bodies (Article 18). Finally, it formalized CCME’s role in advising on public policy regarding the Moroccan diaspora (Article 163). In 2013, the government-appointed Moroccan Commission on National Dialogue and New Constitutional Prerogatives launched an unprecedented consultative dialogue with diaspora community groups to get their recommendations for modes of immigrant political inclusion.

But as of King Mohammed VI’s August 2022 speech, the Moroccan government had not created formal, meaningful, transparent mechanisms for emigrant political participation. While hundreds of émigrés have participated in forums highlighting Moroccan expertise abroad, many wait for a real political stake. Some émigrés have criticized CCME for a lack of democratic procedures for selecting members, and, in practice, its role remains merely consultative (Drhimeur, 2020). In order to vote in their origin country, Moroccans still must return during the time of elections, absorbing all costs for political participation. Shortly before the king’s August 2022 speech, international development lawyer Leila Hanafi (2022) despaired that overseas Moroccans would ever gain the political rights that the new constitution seemed to promise. This past summer, a year after the speech, she wrote (2023): “(W)ith no representation in parliament and a downgrade of a full-fledged ministry once dedicated to them, it is apparent that diaspora citizens are still disenfranchised and their political rights remain a key area for elaboration.”

Transnational Immigrant Organizations: A New Birth in the United States?

Transnational immigrant organizations are an integral part of the Moroccan development model. Early on, Morocco crafted financial instruments to bring emigrants into the banking system and captured remittances for national development projects. Then it fostered partnerships with emigrants for infrastructure design and provision, hosted transnational forums for development and planning, and supported cross-border political lobbies – so much so that, together with Mexico, Morocco came to be seen as a pioneer in linking emigrants to economic development (Iskander, 2010). In Europe, immigrant advocacy organizations were an important part of this process. On the U.S. side, the organizational network is growing and seeking political inclusion, both in Morocco and in the United States. Some of the best-funded U.S. organizations have been tightly associated with the Moroccan government (e.g., the Moroccan American Cultural Center, the Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and the Moroccan American Center for Policy, all based in Washington). But independent immigrant associations have been flourishing as well, including the Association of Moroccan Professionals in America (New York), the High Atlas Foundation (New York), and the Moroccan American Association of California (Fontana, CA) (Migration Policy Institute, 2016). Regardless of their source of funding, these U.S. groups seem to mirror their older, more established partners in France: They appear largely supportive of the development model advanced by Moroccan authorities (LaCroix & Dumont, 2016). But political inclusion is also an issue. How is the Moroccan government soliciting their financial

Fig. 2. Persons from Morocco Admitted as U.S. Permanent Residents, by Decade (2020s projected)

and political support for the “new development model”? How far can the regime go to satisfy emigrants’ demands to have a say in developing, enacting, and evaluating public policy?

Throughout my research leave, I’ll continue to study government and civil society institutions, through searching the literature and interviewing government officials and prominent Moroccan Americans in New York, Washington, and Rabat. In the long run, however, I hope to gain some insight into the views and political integration of a broad swath of Moroccan Americans through survey research. These questions, it seems to me, are extremely important, both to Morocco and to U.S. security. The Moroccan government is keenly aware that its economic development model depends on the so-called Moroccans of the World. Its legitimacy hinges on incorporating more real participation into its ambitious economic development plans. This is especially true as it seeks both to become an African development model and to avoid the instability triggered by the Arab Spring elsewhere in the Arab world. And, in the United States, as we weigh the merits of the Diversity Visa program, it behooves us to know more about how this relatively new community might become more tightly integrated into the U.S. social and political system.

Selected Sources

Bilgili, Ö., & Weyel, S. (2016). Diaspora engagement policies of countries with similar emigration histories: Morocco and Turkey. In Besharov, D. J., & Lopez, M. H., Adjusting to a World in Motion: Trends in Global Migration and Migration Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bilgili, Ö., & Weyel, S. (2013). Diaspora engagement in Morocco. Migration Policy Brief No. 10. United Nations University Migration Network.

Maastricht: Boekenplan.

DeSipio, L., & De la Garza, R. (2015). U.S. immigration in the twenty-first century: Making Americans, remaking America. Boulder: Westview Press.

Drhimeur, L. A. (2020). Moroccan diaspora politics since the 1960s. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4080855

Full speech of King Mohammed VI on anniversary of Revolution of King and People, Morocco World News, August 20, 2022

Gintsburg, S. (2016). Moroccan immigrants in the United States of America: History, languages and identities. Madrid: Ediciones Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Campus de Cantoblanco. Hanafi, L. (2022, August 10). Moroccan diaspora: An elevating force for Morocco’s development. Morocco World News https://www.moroccoworldnews com/2022/08/350714/moroccandiaspora-an-elevating-force-for-morocco Hanafi, L. (2023, July 31). Reflections on Throne Day towards an enhanced engagement of Moroccan diaspora. Morocco World News.

Hasnaoui, A. E. (2021, November 18). The Moroccan diaspora: What are the modes of political participation? Arab Reform Initiative https://www.arabreform.net/pdf/?pid=20442&plang=en Iskander, N. (2010). Creative state: Forty years of migration and development policy in Morocco and Mexico. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

LaCroix, T., & Dumont, A. (2016). Moroccans in France: Their organizations and activities back home. In Portes, A., & Fernandez-Kelly, P., The State and the Grassroots. New York: Berghahn Books. Marks, R., Jacobs, P., & Coritz, A. (2023, September 21). 3.5 million reported Middle Eastern and North African descent in 2020. United States Census Bureau, America Counts Stories. https:// census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/2020census-dhc-a-mena-population.html Migration Policy Institute. (2016). T he Moroccan diaspora in the United States, June 2015 revised. Washington: Migration Policy Institute. https://www migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files / publications/RAD-Morocco.pdf

Paul, J. (2017, October 18). King Mohammed VI calls for new development model. Morocco on the Move news posting. Washington, DC: Moroccan American Center for Policy. Tramsen, F. (2023, September 13). Myth vs. fact: The Diversity “Lottery” Visa. Niskanen Center. https://www niskanencenter.org/myth-vs-fact-the -diversity-lottery-visa/

U.S. Census Bureau. (2022). 1-Year estimates population profiles. American Community Survey, Years 2010-2022.

Dr. Rosanna Perotti is in her 32nd year teaching courses on U.S. elections, public opinion, and public policy in the Political Science Department at Hofstra University. She has helped organize and edit proceedings for two presidential conferences, acts as liaison for the University’s Washington Semester and the New York State Assembly Session internship programs, and co-directs an annual Political Science Department trip to Washington. She has lectured, edited works, and written articles on elections and voting, U.S. immigration policy, the presidency, and teaching methods.

Combating Antisemitism in Europe

in a Post-October 7th World

Carolyn Dudek, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

In 2022, I contributed an article to Hofstra Horizons about my research examining the European Union’s policy to combat antisemitism (Dudek , 2022). In the weeks following the October 7 attack, there was a 240% increase of antisemitic acts in Germany (Bundesverband RIAS, 2023); 1,500 recorded acts of antisemitism in France (France Info, 2023; Taylor, 2023); an 800% increase in the Netherlands (Anti-Defamation League, 2024); and a 300% increase in Austria (Anti-Defamation League, 2024). Across Europe, synagogues were

attacked and desecrated; Holocaust memorials, Jewish cemeteries, and homes were vandalized; violent attacks against Jews occurred; and death threats were sent to prominent Jewish politicians, including the speaker and a member of the National Assembly in France, requiring heightened security detail for them. The political far left and right as well as Muslim extremists have all engaged in or fueled this antisemitic behavior. Moreover, external forces such as Hamas and Russia have stoked the flames of antisemitism across Europe for their own political gain. The response in

Europe to the October 7 brutal Hamas attack against mostly civilians in Israel – the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust – has been an alarming rise of antisemitism in Europe, making the implementation of the EU’s policy to combat antisemitism an imperative across the EU.

Political protest over the Israel-Hamas war has also spilled over beyond political protest to outright antisemitic behavior, as the use of antisemitic slogans, swastikas, Holocaust trivialization, vandalism of Holocaust monuments,

and threats to the Jewish community have become part of these protests. These kinds of behavior are considered criminal offenses as laid out in the EU 2008 Council Framework. Political protest against the war in Gaza is not the issue. The problem is when hate speech, as defined by EU and national law, or violence is utilized to target and threaten European Jews or Holocaust monuments are desecrated. That is antisemitism

My research examines various forms or expressions of antisemitism in Europe and how the EU and national governments address such behavior. Although my research focus is in Europe, the recent European experience can be instructional to address the similar surge of antisemitism in the US post-October 7 (Anti-Defamation League, 2023). Antisemitism, however, is not just about the Jews of Europe or the US; it is about the health of democracy. As Europe and other parts of the world are experiencing democratic backsliding, antisemitism both in person and online is being used as an instrument to further erode democracy. Far left and right populism, as well as Muslim extremists, which use elements from both the far left and right, have all used antisemitism to push their own agenda advocating authoritarian tendencies, discrimination, or violence, which is contrary to democratic values (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2003).

Deborah Lipstadt, scholar and US antisemitism envoy, has stated that Jews are the “canary in the coal mine” for other forms of hatred (Lipstadt, 2022). She explains that history demonstrates how authoritarian regimes often start with antisemitism, but never end with it, as hatred for other groups often emerges (Lipstadt, 2022). Hatred which leads to exclusion, threats, or violence

undermines democracy. For example, it was in the name of antisemitism that fascist movements overran Europe and put its democratic order in peril in the 20th century. Liberal democracy is the bedrock upon which the EU was forged and a core value that underpins the EU and EU member states. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (2021) and her predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker (2019), have both declared that the EU was created out of the ashes of World War II, and that includes the ashes of the Shoah, or Holocaust, where 6 million Jews were murdered in the name of antisemitism.

Democracy is intrinsically linked to civil rights and civil liberties, and antisemitism is a threat to both. Civil liberties and civil rights are protected by law under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Civil liberties protect citizens from state tyranny, guaranteeing certain rights, whereas civil rights refer to protection from unequal treatment or discrimination for certain characteristics such as religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Antisemitism is a form of discrimination, but antisemitism is also used as a tool of the far right and far left populists to undermine democracy, thus making it a civil liberties issue as well.

Democracy is intrinsically linked to civil rights and civil liberties, and antisemitism is a threat to both.

The use of conspiracy theories is one example of how the far left and right and Muslim extremists utilize antisemitism to undermine democracy. These conspiracy theories falsely claim that Jews control government, banks, and the economy (Laqueur, 2006; Marcus, 2015; Porat, 2011). If citizens believe such claims, then governmental institutions are seen as illegitimate. Delegitimizing governmental institutions by claiming that they are in the hands of a small group deters citizen participation and erodes public trust. Public trust and legitimacy are foundations of democracy. Those who believe the conspiracies no longer have faith in the legitimacy of government and in peaceful political participation.

Although there are political and ethnic tensions around the globe, Israel has become a lightning rod for the far left and Muslim extremism ...

retaliation for actions taken by the Israeli government. Blaming European Jews for the actions of a foreign government is not logical and separates European Jews as if they are not European citizens. What is more troubling is that following the unspeakable acts of rape, torture, murder, and hostage-taking of Israeli civilians (some of whom were European citizens), groups across Europe targeted European Jews to show support for these terrorist activities –an expression of overt antisemitism.

Not only are democracy and government legitimacy undermined, but Jews and Jewish sites (as well as non-Jewish ones associated with Jews) become targets. For instance, in 2019, the deadly attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, was perpetrated by an individual who subscribed to these kinds of conspiracy theories; the attack left two people dead, who were bystanders outside the synagogue (Koehler, 2019).

The far left and Muslim extremists have used the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a justification for antisemitic acts. Much of the criticism of Israel has come from the political left, and the political left also is more critical of elite power, money, and capital, which easily slides into attacks on Jews and perceived Jewish influence, similar to old antisemitic tropes. Although there are political and ethnic tensions around the globe, Israel has become a lightning rod for the far left and Muslim extremism, and European Jews have become the target for

Not only is the threat against Jews emerging from within Europe, but it is also being fed via external sources, which also threatens European democracy and security. For instance, on October 31, 2023, 60 Stars of David

in French officials detaining two Moldovan nationals for painting the stars. The French Foreign Ministry accused Russian organizations, Recent Reliable News (RRN), and the Doppelganger network, for being behind the painting of these stars (Le Monde with AFP, 2023). These Russian organizations utilize disinformation to spread false narratives and to promote Russian interference in European politics and society to weaken Europe’s resolve related to the war in Ukraine. Painting Jewish stars on houses was a way to spread fear and instability within Europe (Le Monde with AFP, 2023). In Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, four longstanding members of Hamas with close links to Hamas’ leadership were arrested with

were painted on Jewish residences in Paris, evoking the precarious time for Jews during the Holocaust and purposely threatening Jewish French citizens. In Saint-Ouen, the stars were accompanied by inscriptions such as “Palestine will overcome” (France 24, 2023). The police investigation resulted

three others on suspicion of being part of a cross-border Hamas terror plot that German prosecutors said aimed to obtain weapons to target Jewish institutions in Europe. Both instances demonstrate how external forces, those of Russia and Hamas, have taken advantage of antisemitism to threaten

Jews, undermine citizen safety, and put into question the legitimacy of the state to provide security, which all erode European democracies.

With this disturbing rise in antisemitism across Europe, what tools do the EU and member states have to address antisemitism? In 2015, the EU appointed within the European Commission (the executive body of the EU) the first coordinator for combating antisemitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, as a response to two deadly antisemitic attacks in France and Denmark. As antisemitism began to rise during the pandemic, the coordinator’s office created the first ever strategy to combat antisemitism, a 10-year policy unveiled in October 2021. The strategy focuses on three main pillars: 1) preventing and combating all forms of antisemitism; 2) protecting and fostering Jewish life in the EU; and 3) education, research, and Holocaust remembrance.

states have adopted national strategies to combat antisemitism, and the US even adopted its own strategy to counter antisemitism in May 2023, based on the EU’s strategy (Dudek, 2023). Since this policy is so new, its impact is difficult to determine.

an attempted expansion of the EU’s reach and a possible reshaping of how member states deal with antisemitism.

The step to address antisemitism across the EU was unprecedented and signaled that the EU would expand its policy responsibilities and focus into a new realm related to antidiscrimination policy. For EU scholars, addressing antisemitism demonstrates an attempted expansion of the EU’s reach and a possible reshaping of how member states deal with antisemitism.

However, one area where the EU has tried to gain some headway is using hard law. Hard law refers to EU laws that are binding upon member states and can be “invoked in court as standards for review” (Kantola and Nousiainen, 2012, p. 36). The main hard-law tools the EU has used to address antisemitism are: 1) infringement procedure, which is a formal process that can lead to the European Commission bringing a case against a member state to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that could result in a fine; and 2) the Digital Services Act (DSA), which monitors and has penalties related to online content. Antisemitism has spread significantly in digital spaces, thus making it imperative to address online hate speech (DirectorateGeneral for Justice and Consumers et al., 2021).

In 2008, the EU passed the Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on “combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.” The 2008 Framework states:

Member States must ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable when directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin:

– publicly inciting to violence or hatred, including by public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material

Platforms are to remove illegal/dangerous content within 24 hours, and their compliance is monitored.

acts under the 2008 Council Framework (Council of the European Union, 2008). Yet, a report in 2014 demonstrated that transposition had not occurred in several member states (European Commission, 2014: 5). The conclusion of the report was that the Commission would work bilaterally with member states to ensure the Framework would be properly transposed, but that never came to fruition (European Commission, 2014: 10).

In 2020 and 2021, the Commission launched infringement procedures for 13 member states, regarding the lack of transposition of the 2008 Council Framework. However, before infringement results in a case before the CJEU, the Commission first works with member states to promote compliance. The procedure maintains discretion to avoid shaming member states. To date, there has not been additional information as to the status of these infringement cases.

– publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivializing crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes ... when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite violence or hatred against such a group or one or more of its members. (Council of the European Union, 2008)

Member states were supposed to transpose or create their own legislation to achieve the ideals of the 2008 Council Framework within their national legal system. Hate speech against Jews and “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivializing” the Holocaust (a genocide) are forms of antisemitism and are illegal criminal

On June 17, 2020, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addressed a plenary session of Parliament in response to the anti-racism protests following the murder of George Floyd in the US. She called for action to address racism and discrimination and to build a Europe that is “more equal, more humane, more fair” (de la Baume and Herszenhorn, 2020). As a result of this new attention to racism, the Commission launched the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025. Included in the plan was the call for transposition of the 2008 Council Framework and, if there were noncompliance, infringement procedure would be utilized (European Commission, 2020).

In December 2023, the Commission and High Representative (similar to an EU foreign minister) released a joint communication to the European Parliament and the Council (the legislative bodies of the EU) as a response, in part, to the rise of antisemitism after October 7, calling for both legislative bodies to pass an initiative that would make hate crimes referred to in the 2008 Council Framework considered “EU crimes,” which means an EU law on hate crimes and hate speech would automatically be directly adopted into member state legislation, thus circumventing the need for transposition (European Commission, 2023). Moreover, the communication calls for more security for targeted sites, and the Commission pledged to provide 30 million euros to protect synagogues and other vulnerable sites across Europe (O’Carroll, 2023a).

If the EU can either get member states to transpose the 2008 Council Framework or pass legislation to make hate crimes “EU crimes,” then it will give even more teeth to the Digital Services Act (DSA), which obliges large social media platforms to counter illegal content (European Commission et al., 2023). On November 16, 2022, the EU enacted the DSA, which is a new generation of regulating digital platforms’ content. Since 2016, the EU

had implemented a code of conduct (COC), which is voluntary and for the most part run by the platforms. Trusted third-party flaggers monitor illegal content and notify platforms. Platforms are to remove illegal/dangerous content within 24 hours, and their compliance is monitored. Reports are regularly published and made available to the public announcing what categories of illegal/hate content are removed and how well platforms have complied. The DSA moves from a merely

DSA is applicable only to larger platforms and requires platforms to address systemic risk. The Commission also has supervision and enforcement powers and can impose fines of up to 6% of a company’s global revenues if they fail to remove illegal content (according to national and EU laws), including antisemitic and other racist or xenophobic and defamatory content, from their platforms. European companies will also need to present a plan for responding to incidents of hate speech and disinformation.

The core ideal underpinning the construction of the EU is democratic values.

content-based approach found in the COC to a systems-based approach, which also examines the algorithms that platforms utilize to collect and monitor data.

Under the DSA, each member state will have a regulating agency; the Commission will also have oversight; and large platforms (more than 45 million users) must contract third-party auditors. Platforms must share their algorithms and divulge what decisions were made about content, what is prioritized and not prioritized, which tells a great deal about self-risk assessment of these companies. Because the 2008 Council Framework defines certain hate speech as criminal, the DSA can have an impact on the spread of antisemitism online. The

On October 12, 2023, the Commission sent X (formerly Twitter) a request for information under the DSA regarding “alleged spreading of illegal content and disinformation, in particular the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech” (Europea n Commission, 2023). Commissioner Thierry Breton’s letter to X’s owner, Elon Musk, sounded the alarm about “manifestly false or misleading information” since Hamas’ attack upon Israel (O’Carroll, 2023b). The letter mentions concerns such as “repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games” (O’Carroll, 2023a). In December 2023, the Commission declared that they would open an investigation, making X the first tech company to face an investigation under the new DSA. This investigation and what follows will be a test for the strength of the DSA and how well the EU can address the spread of disinformation online that exacerbated the spread of antisemitism across Europe and the globe.

The DSA and a comprehensive strategy to combat antisemitism are new and untested waters for the EU. Following the rise in antisemitism since October 7, these policies have only become more crucial. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks stated in a speech before the European Parliament in 2016, “the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat first and foremost to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve” (European Commission, 2021).

The core ideal underpinning the construction of the EU is democratic values. If antisemitism is not effectively addressed, not only will European Jews be negatively impacted, but the entire democratic order in Europe will be threatened.

The research for this article was co-funded by the EU ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Module. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Hofstra University. Neither the European Union nor Hofstra University can be held responsible for them.

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Bundesverband RIAS. 2023. “Antisemitic Reactions in Germany to the Hamas Massacres in Israel: Antisemitic Incidents with Reference to the Terrorist Attacks on Israel between October 7-15, 2023.” Berlin: Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Anti-semitism (Bundesverband RIAS). https://report-antisemitism. de/documents/2023-10-18_en_ antisemitische_reaktionen_in _ deutschland_auf_die_hamas-massaker in_israel.pdf

Council of the European Union. 2008. Council Framework Decision 2008/913/ JHA of 28 November 2008 on Combating Certain Forms and Expressions of Racism and Xenophobia by Means of Criminal Law. OJ L. Vol. 328. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dec _ framw/2008/913/oj/eng.

de la Baume, Maïa, and David M. Herszenhorn. 2020. “Von Der Leyen: ‘We Need to Talk about Racism, and We Need to Act’.” Politico, June 17, 2020. https://www.politico.eu/article / von-der-leyen-we-need-to-talk-aboutracism-and-we-need-to-act/.

Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Milo Comerford, and Lea Gerster. 2021. The Rise of Antisemitism Online during the Pandemic: A Study of French and German Content. LU: Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu / doi/10.2838/671381.

Dudek, Carolyn M. 2022. “Can the European Union Live up to Its Ideals and Stave the Spread of Antisemitism in Europe?” Hofstra Horizons. May 12, 2022. https://news.hofstra.edu/2022 / 05/12/can-the-european-union-live-upto-its-ideals-and-stave-the-spread-ofantisemitism-in-europe/.

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European Commission. “Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council: No Place for Hate: A Europe United against Hatred.” 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/ law-oeeul/e66.013.66

———. 2020. “EU Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025.” https://commission. europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies / justice-and-fundamental-rights / combatting-discrimination/racismand-xenophobia/eu-anti-racismaction-plan-2020-2025_en

———. 2021. “EU Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life (2021-2030).” Text. European CommissionEuropean Commission. October 5, 2021. https://ec.europa.eu/info/files / eu-strategy-combating-antisemitismand-fostering-jewish-life-2021-2030_en.

———. 2023. “The Commission Sends Request for Information to X under DSA.” Text. European CommissionEuropean Commission. October 12, 2023. https://ec.europa.eu/commission / presscorner/detail/en/I P_23_4953

European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. 2003. “Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002-2003.” European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2003. https://fra.europa.eu/en / publication/2010/manifestationsantisemitism-eu-2002-2003.

France 24. 2023. “France Probes Stars of David Graffiti in Paris.” France 24, October 31, 2023. https://www.france24. com/en/live-news/20231031-stars-ofdavid-graffiti-in-paris-aim-to-terrify.

France Info. 2023. “Antisémitisme : le ministre de l’Intérieur détaille les actes recensés en France depuis l’attaque du Hamas.” Franceinfo, November 14, 2023. https://www.francetvinfo.fr / societe/antisemitisme/antisemitisme-leministre-de-l-interieur-detaille-lesactes-recenses-en-france-depuis-lattaque-du-hamas_6183669.html.

Juncker, Jean-Claude. 2019. “President Jean-Claude Juncker on the Occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019.” Text. European Commission - European Commission. January 24, 2019. https:// ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner / detail/en/STATEMENT_19_541

Kantola, Johanna, and Kevät Nousiainen. 2012. “The European Union: Initiator of a New European Anti-Discrimination Regime?” In Institutionalizing Intersectionality, 33-58. https://doi.org/10.1057/ 9781137031068_ 2

Koehler, Daniel. 2019. “The Halle, Germany, Synagogue Attack and the Evolution of the Far-Right Terror Threat.” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point 12 (11): 14-20.

Laqueur, Walter. 2006. The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.

Le Monde with AFP. 2023. “France Accuses Russia of ‘online Interference’ over Star of David Graffiti in Paris.” Le Monde.Fr, November 9, 2023. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france / article/2023/11/09/russia-denies-

involvement-in-stars-of-david-graffitiin-paris _6241169_7.html

Lipstadt, Deborah. 2022. “Testimony to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), Hearing on ‘The Alarming Rise in Antisemitism and Its Threat to Democracy.’” US Department of State. https://www.state gov/remarks-to-the-commission-onsecurity-and-cooperation-in-europecsce-hearing-on-the-alarming-rise-inantisemitism-and-its-threat-todemocracy/.

Marcus, Kenneth. 2015. The Definition of Antisemitism. New York: Oxford University Press.

O’Carroll, Lisa. 2023a. “EU Warns Elon Musk over ‘Disinformation’ on X about Hamas Attack.” The Guardian, October 10, 2023, sec. Technology. https://www.theguardian. com/technology/2023/oct/10/euwarns-elon-musk-over-disinformationabout-hamas-attack-on-x.

———. 2023b. “EU Pledges 30m to Protect Mosques and Synagogues amid Hate Crime Rise.” The Guardian, December 6, 2023, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world / 2023/dec/06/eu-pledges-30m-toprotect-mosques-and-synagogues-amidhate-rise.

Porat, Dina. 2011. “The International Working Definition of Antisemitism and Its Detractors.” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 5 (3): 93-101.

Taylor, Paul. 2023. “As Antisemitism Soars, for Many Jews in France

Nowhere Feels Safe.” The Guardian, December 2, 2023, sec. Opinion. https://www.theguardian.com / commentisfree/2023/dec/02 / antisemitism-jews-france-emmanuelmacron-israel-hamas-war

von der Leyen, Ursula. 2021. “European Commission President von Der Leyen Vows to Eradicate Antisemitism in Address to AJC Virtual Global Forum | AJC.” June 9, 2021. https://www.ajc.org / news/european-commission-presidentvon-der-leyen-vows-to-eradicateantisemitism-in-address-to-ajc

Co-funded by the European Union

Dr. Carolyn M. Dudek is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science and director of the European Studies program at Hofstra University. She specializes in comparative politics with regional focuses in Europe and Latin America. She is the author of EU Accession and Spanish Regional Development: Winners and Losers. In addition, she has published several articles and book chapters on EU antisemitism policy, trans-Atlantic agricultural trade and regulatory disparities, Spanish politics, regional nationalism in Europe, European Union regional development policy, EU-Latin American relations, the immigration crisis in Europe, and the rise of the far right. She is also a regular editorial contributor to La Razón, a national newspaper in Spain.

Dr. Dudek holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Spain and Argentina and was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She is currently the coordinator for the ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Module at Hofstra University, which is focused on EU Anti-Discrimination and Hate Crime Policy. In spring 2021, she was named Mentor of the Year at Hofstra University.

Hofstra Religious Mapping Project Connects Kalikow Student Researchers with Nassau County Religious Communities

Ann Burlein, PhD, Professor of Religion, Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Julie Byrne, PhD, Professor of Religion, Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Last summer, the Hofstra Religious Mapping Project team was in the midst of intensive fieldwork – visiting over a dozen local religious organizations within a few weeks, writing up field notes after our visits, organizing them alongside data gathered during the year, and planning for next year’s work – when suddenly the sky went dark.

On June 7, 2023, part of our team – one professor, two students – was

scheduled to visit the Wednesday night Bible study of a local nondenominational Christian church a few miles from Hofstra’s campus. But Canadian wildfire smoke drifting south had blotted out the sun and filled the air with swirling particles. We donned face masks in the Heger Hall lounge, dashed to the car in the Public Safety parking lot, and got in as fast as we could, trying to preserve the more pristine air inside the car. The feeling as we started this visit was, well, apocalyptic.

Once we got to the church, however, the mood changed. We encountered a small group of perhaps 20 people who had gathered to study their scripture, despite the air quality warnings. We were the only guests, so we introduced ourselves as a group from Hofstra. We did what we usually do – listen; participate or not as we felt comfortable; absorb the details of this place, these community members, these words, these practices. This particular church, we noticed, featured a stage-like pulpit area with purple

neon accents, and an unusual representation of men, for a weeknight Bible study. The young minister was enthusiastic, and the community members were tight-knit, sharing problems and praying for each other.

But it was not only enthusiasm and caring that lifted the mood. The connection between us – between community members and their unexpected visitors – also made a difference. “See, I was this close to calling in and canceling tonight’s Bible study!” the minister said. “But if I had done that, we would have missed out on these wonderful guests from Hofstra. They would have met church doors closed and locked!” As we departed, we made small talk with various members and were warmly invited to come visit anytime. The day’s apocalyptic sense gave way to something that felt more like a new beginning.

And that’s what the Hofstra Religious Mapping Project is ultimately about –a new beginning for connection, learning, and opportunity as the religious studies classroom goes out into the local community.

This spring, the Department of Religion celebrates two years of work on the Hofstra Religious Mapping Project.

Led by us, Ann Burlein and Julie Byrne, this project is an ongoing research collaboration with our majors pursuing the BA in Religion and Contemporary Issues (R&CI, for short). The concrete aim of the Mapping Project is to map the locations of the incredible variety of religious organizations in Nassau County, as well as to visit and build relationships with them. More broadly, we are forging connections between students’ classroom study and people’s religious realities, and between Hofstra and the wider Nassau community.

So far, the Mapping Project has employed five student researchers, provided internships to others, gathered data on over 100 religious organizations, started development of a website with an interactive map, and garnered over $30,000 in grants and awards. We have also visited over two dozen sites for events ranging from a bat mitzvah to a discussion about social justice at the Unitarian Universalist fellowship; from Sunday worship at Catholic and Anglican liturgies to the Greek festival at the St. Paul Orthodox Cathedral in Hempstead. Along the way, we have spoken with many interesting and dedicated people, and are slowly getting a sense of the various kinds of outreach programs that are happening all around Hofstra.

Versions of “mapping projects” have been conducted in a number of religion departments across the country over the last decade or so, most prominently the Pluralism Project at Harvard University

The concrete aim of the Mapping Project is to map the locations of the incredible variety of religious organizations in Nassau County, as well as to visit and build relationships with them.

The Hofstra Religious Mapping Project team gathers for a working lunch in Heger Hall in spring 2024. Clockwise from left: Abigail Anderson, Dylan Budhu, Grace Varnum, Dr. Ann Burlein (joining by Zoom), Elizabeth Hennessy, Dr. Julie Byrne, and Andrew Sine.

We started the Hofstra Religious Mapping Project for several reasons. First, the Religion Department has shifted to a model of studying religion and Jewish studies that emphasizes the importance of religious literacy for all career paths. “Religious literacy” means having a supple understanding of how religion shows up in public spaces and how it is practiced in communities. It is a crucial element of preparing students for future work and civic engagement with increasingly diverse populations, including religious diversity. Our R&CI major offers concentrations in health, law, and media, reflecting the shift toward teaching religious literacy as a critical skill for any future profession. In our view, experiencing religion in the communities where it happens is particularly important for such literacy, because so much of current work on diversity, equity, and inclusion tends to render religion into a static identity or even an abstraction. Yet people live religion in very particular ways. If you look only for beliefs and practices, you

might miss how this congregation is focusing on antiracism work, or that masjid is mostly concerned with voting rights, or that temple runs a massive soup kitchen.

“The in-person visits to religiously affiliated sites [and] conversations with people are my favorite part,” said Mapping Project student researcher Abigail Anderson (R&CI and Psychology, Rabinowitz Honors College [RHC] ’24). “Talking about religion can be difficult or seen as taboo, and the Mapping Project has exposed me to so many different walks of life and taught me how to offer a space for people to share their experiences.

“I’ve always known that I want to work with people – whether it be teaching, researching, clinical psychology,” Abi added. “While I’m not sure what I’ll end up in, I know that the openness to experience and appreciation for the power of spiritual belief in people’s lives will serve me well.” Along with

Abi, in 2022-2023, we also recruited Andrew Sine (R&CI and History, RHC ’25) as the two founding student researchers

Second, we wanted to create a sense of a cohort among our majors, offering them a unique opportunity to deepen their Hofstra experience intellectually, interpersonally, and professionally. The Hofstra Religious Mapping Project builds relationships with professors, but also with other religion students and the community beyond Hofstra’s campus. They gain experience presenting research as a team at Undergraduate Research Day and at celebrations of the Rabinowitz Honors College Research Assistant Program. And they learn what it means to work on a team and build up a project. “The Mapping Project has developed my problem-solving skills and has shown me how to create structures and systems for a concept to make it a reality,” Andrew said.

In 2023-2024, the team expanded to include two more majors, Dylan Budhu (R&CI and Physician Assistant Studies, RHC ’27) and Elizabeth Hennessy (R&CI and Political Science, ’27).

“I currently aspire to enter the medical field where I would ... interact with people of various backgrounds,” Dylan said. “Familiarity with their religious beliefs will help me connect to their values and understand a meaningful part of their identity.” Elizabeth, who plans to practice law in the future, expressed similar views. “Being able to meet people from different religions, backgrounds, and cultures is essential for any career path,” she said. “It is also a great way to find out more about the area we are in. I have always been really intrigued by people’s different religions and beliefs and why, so being able to do that through this project has made it a really important part of my academic life.”

Hofstra Religious Mapping Project team members (l to r) Andrew Sine, Abigail Anderson, and Lex Besecker at Undergraduate Research Day, spring 2023.

Student researchers attest to the power of getting out of their comfort zone to witness religion firsthand.

In both years of the project, we also added students with mapping experience via geographic information systems (GIS): Lex Besecker (English, Writing Studies, RHC ’23) and Grace Varnum (Sustainability Studies, GIS Studies, RHC ’24). Introduced to GIS mapping in classes with our colleague in Global Studies and Geography, Dr. Craig Dalton, Lex and Grace both hope to pursue careers involving GIS mapping in areas such as urban planning and environmental sustainability. Since Lex graduated,

Founding students of the Hofstra Religious Mapping Project at the Rabinowitz Honors College celebration of its Research Assistant Program, December 2022. From left: Abigail Anderson, Lex Besecker, and Andrew Sine.

Grace has continued the work of developing the website and transferring selected data gathered by the student researchers onto an interactive map.

The original Hofstra Religious Mapping team at Undergraduate Research Day, December 2022. From left: Dr. Julie Byrne, Abigail Anderson, Lex Besecker, Andrew Sine, and Dr. Ann Burlein.

Third, we started the project because we wanted to expand our ability to use two pedagogical strategies that are known to have a high impact on students: inviting religious practitioners as classroom guest speakers and including site visits as part of regular classes. We have had guest speakers and site visits in our courses in the past, but – as professors who commute to Hofstra from Queens and Brooklyn – we needed a way to get to know Nassau County better and translate those new connections into syllabus highlights.

Student researchers attest to the power of getting out of their comfort zone to witness religion firsthand. “Visiting a Hindu temple for their Hanuman puja was a really memorable experience,” reported student researcher Abi Anderson. “The people were incredibly welcoming, even giving our research team a tour of the temple and offering us food, and the ritual was very

The Mapping Project has been fortunate and grateful to receive a number of grants and awards to support the work, totaling $30,900 so far.

different from anything I’d ever observed. Rather than an orchestrated or structured gathering, it was more of a communal meditation. The people seemed to be connecting with each other and their gods on a more spiritual level, performing the ... ritualistic walk, bow, and offering alone upon entering the room, and then joining friends and family to talk, listen to the music, and just be. This visit redefined religion for me.”

Student researcher Andrew Sine said that visiting the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Hempstead was his most memorable experience so far. “When Fr. Elias [Pappas] offered the space to me as a peaceful place, not an attempt to evangelize,” he said, “I was touched because it made me feel like a part of a community, regardless of religious beliefs.”

The final reason why we started the project has to do with Hofstra’s exciting momentum to gain a Carnegie classification of R2 (high research activity) status and to offer more resources for grant writing and research. We found ourselves in conversation with other Hofstra units about large, multi-department grant proposals, such as recent RFPs from the National Science Foundation that call for partnership with local organizations. We realized that as a department, our contribution could be precisely what the Mapping Project enables: connection with community stakeholders in the churches, synagogues, masjids, gurdwaras, centers, and temples of Nassau County.

Everywhere in the U.S., local religious organizations are often the places where community members gather to envision possible futures, talk about common needs, organize collective action, and cultivate leadership. This is even more the case for many marginalized communities, in which religious organizations are sometimes among the few spaces that afford a sense of belonging and self-determination. If there are future Hofstra partnerships with Nassau County stakeholders for climate action, public health, or educational outreach, the Department of Religion via the Mapping Project will have built the bridges to make those partnerships possible.

The Mapping Project has been fortunate and grateful to receive a number of grants and awards to support the work, totaling $30,900 so far. We have received funding from Hofstra University entities such as the Office of the President, the Rabinowitz Honors College Research Assistant Program, the National Center for Suburban Studies, the Firestone Fellowship Program, the Peer Teacher Program, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Hofstra Cultural Center, and the Department of Religion.

We also secured two external grants. In 2022-2023, we won a Building Interfaith America Campus Grant from Interfaith America,ii a national nonprofit working to strengthen pluralism as a positive civic practice in U.S. public spaces. And in 2023-2024, we won a grant from the Center on Lived Religion (COLR), a project at St. Louis University funded by the Henry Luce Foundation that “employs digital research to explore, map, and study religious diversity.” iii The COLR grant enlists our Mapping Project team of seven to help test the beta version of a

Dr. Julie Byrne at the St. Paul Orthodox Cathedral in Hempstead

new app, “Where’s Religion?” which aims to make site visits and collection of artifacts of religion in public spaces as easy as entering the information on your phone.

Hofstra students have already recognized the Department of Religion as a locus of innovative and effective teaching. Ann Burlein won the Kalikow School Teacher of the Year Award in 2022-2023, and Julie Byrne won the Kalikow School Teacher of the Year Award in 2023-2024.

The Mapping Project allows us to expand and enhance departmental teaching excellence. In spring 2024, Ann is teaching a new version of her popular course RELI 88: Alternative Medicine, bringing in a naturopath, an acupuncturist, and a reiki master as guest speakers. And Julie is revamping a fieldwork course, giving it a new title and an unconventional structure to accommodate many site visits. The refreshed RELI 158 will be called simply Visiting Religious Organizations, and it will broaden

the impact of the Mapping Project to students beyond R&CI majors. We hope to offer RELI 158 for the first time in spring 2025.

Footnotes

i The Pluralism Project at https:// pluralism.org /

ii For more on Interfaith America, please see https://www.interfaithamerica.org /.

iii For more on the Center on Lived Religion at St. Louis University, please see https://www.facebook. com/livedreligion/.

Dr. Ann Burlein is professor of religion at Hofstra University, where she specializes in religion and medicine, and religion and the body. Her first book, Lift High the Cross, explored the role of biblical religiosity in mainstreaming both the religious right and white supremacist forms of contemporary religion. She has also written articles on the intersection between religion and genetics, as well as on Foucault’s notion of spirituality. In addition to the Department of Religion, she teaches courses in women’s studies and disability studies, and in Hofstra’s School of Health Professions and Human Services.

Dr. Julie Byrne holds the Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman Chair in Catholic Studies and serves as professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion at Hofstra University.

Before arriving in New York, she previously taught at Duke University (2004-2006) and Texas Christian University (2000-2004). Her first book, O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs (Columbia, 2003), tells the story of Catholic women’s basketball in the Philadelphia archdiocese from 1930 to 1975. Her second book, The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion, was published by Columbia University Press in 2016. It is a cultural history of independent Catholicism in the U.S. Her current book project, which won a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars award, focuses on tristate families affected by 9/11 and its aftermath. As part of her research, she is learning to speak Spanish.

Dr. Byrne teaches about topics in comparative religions of the Americas, focusing on contemporary communities and connections to current events. Her courses at Hofstra include What is Religion?, Demonology, Religion & Media, and Sacred Drugs. She publishes popular articles and speaks frequently to the media, including The New York Times, Newsday, and Voice of America.

Grading the Obama-Duncan Education Record

When Barack Obama took office in January 2009, he and Education Secretary Arne Duncan proposed lofty goals for improving education in the United States, despite the nation being mired in a global economic crisis. Their major educational initiatives included Race to the Top, announced in July 2009, and ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act), passed in 2015 as a revision of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind legislation. With these programs, President Obama committed to ensuring a highquality education for all students,

so that when they graduated from high school, they were ready to attend college or enter the workforce. He believed that as a result of these initiatives, the United States would have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 (Duncan, 2010).

President Obama generally had a very practical conception of the importance of education, not just for the individual, but also for the country as a whole. In July 2011, he hosted a roundtable with leaders from the private and public sectors to discuss how investment in education contributed to a

competitive American workforce. At the roundtable, President Obama laid out the basic principle of his educational agenda. According to the president, “A world-class education is the single most important factor in determining not just whether our kids can compete for the best jobs but whether America can out-compete countries around the world. America’s business leaders understand that when it comes to education, we need to up our game. That’s why we’re working together to put an outstanding education within reach for every child” (Mechaber, 2011).

Alan J. Singer, PhD, Professor of Teaching, Learning & Technology, School of Education, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

From left: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, acting Surgeon General Boris D. Lushniak, Chef Pati Jinich, and NFL Hall of Famer Warren Moon participate in a “Let’s Read! Let’s Move!” event at the Library of Congress. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education.

I suspect that by “world-class education,” President Obama was not offering the children of ordinary Americans the kind of education he and his family members received. Barack and Michelle Robinson Obama both graduated from Ivy League colleges and attended Harvard Law School. Daughters Malia and Sasha attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory School while the family lived in Chicago and graduated from the private Sidwell Friends School when the family moved to Washington, D.C. Malia later graduated from Harvard University, while Sasha attended the University of Michigan and in May 2023 graduated from the University of Southern California. Secondary school tuition at the Sidwell Friends School is over $50,000 a year. Undergraduate tuition at Harvard is now $55,000 a year, but estimated annual expenses can exceed $80,000 (Nasaw, 2009; Vassallo, 2022; Harvard, n.d.).

Evaluating the impact of President Barack Obama’s educational agenda is made more difficult because the successor Trump administration had no discernible educational policy and because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a strong negative effect on student performance on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress examinations. However, data on student performance prior to President Obama leaving office suggests that claims for radical improvement in student performance were exaggerated (Mervosh & Wu, 2022: A1).

In 2009, Obama and Duncan announced Race to the Top, a competition for grants that states could use to partner with private corporations to develop their own tests aligned with Common Core Standards. With $4 billion available, 46 states and the District of Columbia submitted comprehensive

reform plans, and 19 of the applicants received funding. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama boasted that as a result of Race to the Top, almost every state had developed “smarter curricula and higher standards, for about 1 percent of what we spend on education each year.” However, according to a 2018 report by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) “[t]he trend lines of United States’ mean performance in reading since 2000, mathematics since 2003 and science since 2006 are stable, with no significant improvement or decline” (Mechabar, 2011; Strauss, 2013a; PISA, 2018).

Every Student Succeeds was written into law in 2015 because of what President Obama and Congress considered the unrealistic expectations and punitive enforcement of the Bush era’s No Child Left Behind policy. According to the president, “The goals of No Child Left Behind were the right ones — high standards, accountability, closing the achievement gap, making sure every child was learning. But in practice, it often fell short ... It led to too much testing during classroom

”A world-class education is the single most important factor in determining not just whether our kids can compete for the best jobs but whether America can out-compete countries around the world.“

– President Barack Obama

time, forced schools and school districts into cookie cutter reforms that didn’t produce the kind of results that we wanted to see” (Strauss, 2015b). Under the new law, states were still required to test students annually in grades three through eight in math and reading and once in high school, but each state would be allowed to develop its own

The evaluation process for teachers and schools was so complex that the New York City Department of Education had to hire expensive consultants to go into schools and explain the criteria for evaluation and the formulas to teachers.

test scores, it is only fair to hold the Obama-Duncan education program to the same standard. According to a Pew Research Center study based on international tests administered in 2015, American students placed 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. The average fourth-grade math score in 2015 was the same level as in 2009. This was attributed in part to declining U.S. spending on education from 2010 to 2014. By the time American students took these exams, Race to the Top had been in place for about six years. And by that time, it was clear that its major impacts were the repeated testing of students, curriculum designed to prepare students for tests, high profits for testing companies such as Pearson, and questionable reevaluations of teachers (Desilver, 2017).

in 2014. For 2018, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) compared the percentage of residents ages 25 to 64 who completed a two-year or fouryear college degree or an advanced vocational program. The United States ranked sixth, trailing Canada, Japan, Israel, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, and in 2022, it dropped to seventh. For the age cohort 25-34, which includes many of the people most affected by Obama-Duncan educational policies, in 2021, the United States did not rank in the top 10 (Bouchrika, 2023; National Center for Education Statistics, 2023).

methods for judging school performance and programs for addressing chronically underperforming schools (Strauss, 2015b).

As Race to the Top and ESSA promoted an evaluation of educational programs, students, and teachers based on student

While the percentage of people completing a degree beyond high school may not be the best indicator of educational achievement, it was one cited by President Obama as a measure of his educational policies. According to a 2017 UNESCO report, the number of students worldwide attending higher education institutions increased from 100 million in 2000 to 207 million

Both President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan cherry-picked data to claim success for their educational policies. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama specifically cited developments in Tennessee. Under Race to the Top, Tennessee was awarded a federal grant worth over $500 million based on a proposal that required teachers to be rated based on student test scores and extensive evaluations by school administrators. Arne Duncan also praised Tennessee for its “courage” and “commitment to turn their ideas into practices that can improve outcomes for students” and Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam called his state “the focal point of education reform in the nation,” declaring Tennessee’s new motto “First to the Top” (Obama, 2013; Winerip, 2011).

In 2009, Tennessee ranked near the bottom of the country on National Assessment of Educational Progress examinations, and while student test scores initially improved between 2013 and 2019, the performance of Tennessee fourth and eighth graders on the NAEP Math test was unchanged and scores declined in reading. In 2011, a middle school principal who

was originally a big supporter of Tennessee’s Race to the Top proposal described it as a disaster because the new rules required four observations a year of the school’s best teachers with both pre- and post-observation conferences and forced principals to complete enormous volumes of paperwork that prevented them from working with the students or teachers who actually need the help. And elementary school teachers of subjects that were not tested were evaluated based on student scores on tests in completely different subjects. The journal Education Week described the situation in Tennessee as so convoluted and impractical that the entire Race to the Top program was in jeopardy (Winerip, 2011: A18; Loewus, 2011).

New York state secured $700 million in the Race to the Top competition to develop new teacher evaluation processes. The evaluation process for teachers and schools was so complex that the New York City Department of Education had to hire expensive consultants to go into schools and explain the criteria for evaluation and the formulas to teachers. Opposition to the new evaluations was statewide. Led by the Long Island Principals Association, thousands of school principals, district administrators, and teachers issued an open letter to New York state officials and the public that questioned the validity of the proposed Annual Professional Performance Review, or APPR (Singer, 2011).

The letter closed:

“The proposed APPR process is an unproven system that is wasteful of increasingly limited resources. More importantly, it will prove to be deeply demoralizing to educators and harmful to the children in our care. Our students are more than the sum of their test scores, and an overemphasis on test

scores will not result in better learning. According to a nine-year study by the National Research Council, the past decade’s emphasis on testing has yielded little learning progress, especially considering the cost to our taxpayers. We welcome accountability and continually strive to meet high standards. We want what is best for our students. We believe, however, that an unproven, expensive and potentially harmful evaluation system is not the path to lasting school improvement. We must not lose sight of what matters the most — the academic, social and emotional growth of our students” (Singer, 2011).

In the 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama also made other very questionable references. He touted pre-school education in Georgia and Oklahoma as national models, although both states were anti-union, with average starting salaries for teachers that kept them and their families below the poverty line. He called for a new emphasis on job preparation tech programs in high schools, but the Brooklyn, New York, school he cited as a model was new and had no graduates at the time – so no one was employed

in a tech job or attending college. In addition, The New York Times reported that the school’s objective was to “prepare students for entrylevel technology jobs paying around $40,000 a year,” far below middle-class salary requirements needed to support a family in New York City (Obama, 2013; Baker, 2012: A17).

Most educators I know, including me, liked Barack Obama and his message of hope and possibility but disliked Arne Duncan, both for his policy proposals and his frequently hostile attitude toward public schools and teachers. However, as president, Obama has to take responsibility for Duncan.

Duncan was the point man in the Obama administration, pushing for adoption of the Common Core Standards and high-stakes standardized assessments as an “absolute gamechanger,” questioning teacher tenure, and supporting the expansion of the charter school industry with new federal grants. He also had a way of alienating and insulting public school teachers and parents and professional organizations. In 2009, at an event sponsored by the Council for Foreign

... Common Core brought new high-stakes standardized tests and paltry performance results

student scores barely changed, despite a decade of Common Core test prep. In 2019, fewer than 38% of students passed the competency exam in English and only 32% met expectations in math (Kunichoff, 2019; An, 2019).

countries. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org / fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-studentsinternationally-math-science/ (Accessed November 30, 2022).

Relations, Duncan told the audience that educators “have to stop lying to children and stop lying to parents about our educational progress.” In 2013, Duncan demeaned “white suburban moms” who opposed the Common Core-aligned, high-stakes standardized exams because the exams supposedly forced them to accept that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” In 2014, while claiming to support teacher tenure, Duncan called it a “broken system” and argued that there needed to be an easier way to fire ineffective teachers. He also proposed incentives that would pit teachers against each other to earn merit bonuses (Strauss, 2015a; Strauss, 2013b).

The record shows it was Duncan who was “lying.” In Illinois, where Duncan was chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools before becoming secretary of education, Common Core brought new high-stakes standardized tests and paltry performance results. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, test was abandoned when it proved to be expensive, and students performed worse on it than on previous standardized tests. Illinois switched to its own Illinois Assessment of Readiness, but the statewide average

Ironically, as his time in office was waning, Duncan posted a blog where he celebrated the achievements of his educational stewardship and declared his commitment to a “spirit of flexibility,” something not evident while he was in office. However, in what can only be interpreted as implied recognition of the failures of ObamaDuncan educational policies, Duncan announced that states could request waivers from all the federal mandates he had pushed to implement (Singer, 2014).

So how should we grade the ObamaDuncan record on education?

Borrowing from language used in ratings by the PARCC Common Core student evaluation report, it definitely “Did not meet expectations.”

References

An, S. (2019, October 30). New Illinois report card shows minimal test score gains. NPR WBEZ https://www.npr.org / local/309/2019/10/30/774779644/newillinois-report-card-shows-minimal-testscore-gains (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Baker, A. (2012, October 22). At technology high school, goal isn’t to finish in 4 years. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22 / nyregion/pathways-in-technologyearly-college-high-school-takes-a-newapproach-to-vocational-education.htm l (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Bouchrika, I. (2023, July 28). Reasons not to go to college: 52 statistics on barriers to tertiary education. Research com. https://research.com/education / reasons-not-to-go-to-college (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Desilver, D. (2017, February 15). U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other

Duncan, A. (2010, August 12). Obama’s goal for higher education. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/2010/08/01/ america-education-reform-opinionsbest-colleges-10-duncan.html (Accessed August 18, 2023).

Harvard University. (n.d.). Tuition and fees, Harvard University. https:// registrar.fas.harvard.edu/tuition-and-fees (Accessed August 18, 2023).

Kunichoff, Y. (2019, March 16). 5 things you should know about the “Zombie” PARCC. Chalkbeat Chicago. https://chicago.chalkbeat. org/2019/3/6/21107881/5-things-youshould-know-about-the-zombieparcc (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Loewus, L. (2011, October 18). Teacherevaluation rush may jinx other states’ efforts. Education Week https://www edweek.org/policy-politics/teacherevaluation-rush-may-jinx-other-statesefforts/2011/10 (Accessed August 16, 2023) .

Mechaber, E. (2011, July 18). Staying competitive through education: The president and American business leaders announce new commitments. The White House Blog. https:// obamawhitehouse.archives.gov / blog/2011/07/18/staying-competitivethrough-education-president-andamerican-business-leaders-announ # (Accessed November 30, 2022).

Mervosh, S., & Wu, A. (2022, October 24). Testing reveals alarming drop in math skills. New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/mathreading-scores-pandemic.html (Accessed November 30, 2022).

Nasaw, D. (2009, January 5). Obama daughters begin school in Washington. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2009/jan/05/barack-obamamalia-sasha-sidwell-friends (Accessed August 18, 2023).

National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). International educational

attainment. The Condition of Education 2023 https://nces.ed.gov/programs / coe/indicator/cac/intl-ed-attainment (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Obama, B. (2013, February 12).

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As prepared for delivery, State of the Union Address. The White House. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov / the-press-office/2013/02/12/presidentbarack-obamas-state-union-addressprepared-delivery (Accessed August 16, 2023)

PISA. (2018). Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results from PISA 2018. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) https://www.oecd org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_ USA.pdf (Accessed November 30, 2022).

Singer, A. (2011, November 22). Race to the Top mandates impossible to implement. Huffington Post. https:// www.huffpost.com/entry/race-to-thetop-mandates_b_1105092 (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Singer, A. (2014, August 25). Arne Duncan declares victory in war on schools and teachers. Huffington Post https://www.huffpost.com/entr y/ arne-duncan-declares-vict_b_5699255 (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Strauss, V. (2013a, February 12). Obama on education in State of Union address. Washington Post Answer Sheet. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news / answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/12/obamaon-education-in-state-of-union-address / (Accessed November 30, 2022).

Strauss, V. (2013b, August 26). Arne Duncan’s endless supply of “game changers.” Washington Post Answer Sheet. https://www.washingtonpost. com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/26 / arne-duncans-endless-supply-of-gamechangers/ (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Strauss, V. (2015a, October 4). The tenure of Education Secretary Arne Duncan – in his own sometimes startling words. Washington Post Answer Sheet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news / answer-sheet/wp/2015/10/04/the-tenure-

of-education-secretary-arne-duncanin-his-own-sometimes-startling-words / (Accessed August 16, 2023).

Strauss, V. (2015b, December 17). Don’t blame George W. Bush for what President Obama did to public schools. Washington Post Answer Sheet. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/answersheet/wp/2015/12/17/dont-blame-georgew-bush-for-what-president-obama-didto-public-schools/ (Accessed November 30, 2022).

Vassallo, J. (2022, March 16). Where are Malia and Sasha now that they left the White House? OK! https:// okmagazine.com/p/where-are-maliasasha-obama-now-white-house/ (Accessed August 18, 2023).

Winerip, M. (2011, November 6). In Tennessee, following the rules for evaluations off a cliff. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/ education/tennessees-rules-on-teacherevaluations-bring-frustration.htm l (Accessed August 16, 2023)

Dr. Alan Singer is a social studies educator and historian in the Department of Teaching, Learning & Technology at Hofstra University. He is a former New York City high school teacher and regularly blogs about educational and political issues on and other sites. Dr. Singer is a member of the New York State Council for the Social Studies, New Jersey Council for the Social Studies, Long Island Council for the Social Studies, and Association of Teachers of Social Studies (New York City). He is a graduate of the City College of New York and holds a PhD in American History from Rutgers University. He taught at a number of secondary schools in New York City, including Franklin K. Lane High School and Edward R. Murrow High School.

Dr. Singer is the author of Education Flashpoints (Routledge, 2014); Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: A Handbook for Secondary School Teachers, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2013); Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 4th edition (Routledge, 2014); Teaching Global History (Routledge, 2011); and New York and Slavery, Time to Teach the Truth (SUNY, 2008). He was a co-director of the New York State Great Irish Famine Curriculum Guide and the editor of the New York and Slavery: Complicity and Resistance Curriculum Guide. Both curriculum projects received National Council for the Social Studies Program of Excellence Awards. He was a participating historian in the documentary Defining Moments: The Civil Rights Movement in North Hempstead. He has written a series of articles on 19th century New York City’s complicity with slavery and is developing them into a book and a curriculum guide. Dr. Singer has a regular blog on educational issues on HuffPost.

Medieval Spain, a Thousand Years Ago

Simon Doubleday, PhD, Professor of History, Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Scene 1: Madrid

It is summer, I am in my mid-20s, and I am staying in a student residence in the Spanish capital. In my room, I am poring over a scholarly book, while listening intently through my earphones to The Jimi Hendrix Experience. For the first time, I have noticed the sound of the backing singers. I have always found that music helps in blocking the distractions of the outside world, and I am simultaneously taking assiduous notes on the book. It is Bernard F. Reilly’s The Kingdom of León-Castilla Under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126, a study of monarchy,

power, and society in 12th-century Spain [Fig. 1]. I am interested in the details that Reilly commands so magnificently: his laborious tracing of the movements of queens, kings, magnates, and courts, and his deep understanding of the dynamics of culture in medieval Iberia.

These details are essential as I work on my doctoral thesis, a study of an aristocratic family called the Laras. One of the members of the Lara family, Pedro González, had a relationship — and two children — with Queen Urraca, the subject of Reilly’s work. Stylistically, the book

is traditional (even old-fashioned), and the reading experience is enhanced by the music. But Queen Urraca is also a thing of wonder: a monument to the extraordinarily difficult task of laboring for years in dusty Spanish archives to reconstruct new, fresh narratives of medieval history. Reilly, for me, as for others in my generation of students, provides a magisterial foundation for my own work.

Scene 2:

Hempstead

About 25 years later, in early 2018, I am sitting in my office in what is known at the time as the

New Academic Building (NAB), a name it retains for a full decade before being recast as Joseph G. Shapiro Family Hall. I am chair of the Department of History by this time, and I am surrounded by Registration and Change of Grade forms. It is a relief to open an envelope addressed to me in an intriguing, unfamiliar handwriting. I quickly discover it is from Bernard F. Reilly, professor emeritus at Villanova University [Fig. 2].

In the letter, Reilly explains that he has written a manuscript on the reign of Fernando I of León-Castile, one of Urraca’s 11th-century predecessors. This is effectively a companion piece to several other histories he has written, which also include studies of Urraca’s father (Alfonso VI) and son (Alfonso VII). But this manuscript, which runs to several hundred pages, has encountered problems. The external readers at the University of Pennsylvania Press, tasked with evaluating the quality of the manuscript, have not fully appreciated the core arguments he wanted to make; they have proposed sweeping changes, and the magnitude of their suggestions is daunting for a man of his advanced age, he explains. He is now well into his 90s. In a gesture of great generosity, he invites me to take on the manuscript, to bring it to completion, and to make whatever changes I see fit.

It would not be true to say that I did not hesitate. At that stage, I had been planning to move forward in time from my most recent book, The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance (2015), set in the 13th century. I was now envisaging a shift to the 16th century and a study of María Pita, a powerful woman from the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia who helped fend off my English compatriots when Queen Elizabeth I launched a punitive

Counter-Armada against the coastal cities of Spain and Portugal in 1589.

In the letter, Reilly said he imagined I was familiar with King Fernando I through my own readings; but in truth, his reign, which lasted from 1038 to 1065, was in fact relatively unknown to me. I had never ventured quite so far back in time. My book The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain (2001), which had emerged from that doctoral dissertation, had begun at the end of the 11th century, about a generation after Fernando’s reign. I had read a little about the earlier period, of course: enough to know that the standard opinion was that this was a period when the various Christian rulers of the north of Spain were gaining the upper hand over the Muslim rulers of the south. The old caliphate of Córdoba had collapsed in the early 11th century, and most scholars said that Christian kings like Fernando were able to extort enormous payments called parias from the petty kings of new kingdoms that had coalesced around cities such as Seville, Granada, and Toledo. But the reign of Fernando I and his wife, Queen Sancha, was largely terra incognita for me [Fig. 3].

There was one curious caveat: I had in fact been one of those pesky external readers for the University of Pennsylvania Press, and in the process had begun to learn a great deal. In my report to Penn, in 2016, I had written: “Prof. Bernard Reilly is, of course, one of the great and pioneering historians of medieval Iberia: a scholar to whom all of us in the field owe a great debt of gratitude. The current volume, aiming to address the reign of Fernando I, aspires to provide a complement to his earlier studies on the reigns of Alfonso VI (Fernando’s son) and Urraca (Alfonso VI’s daughter). In principle, such a volume is to be welcomed; I am not familiar with any English-language

But Queen Urraca is also a thing of wonder: a monument to the extraordinarily difficult task of laboring for years in dusty Spanish archives to reconstruct new, fresh narratives of medieval history.

work addressing the reign. The manuscript is clearly and deeply informed, on every page and in every paragraph, by close familiarity with the laconic primary sources of the period, published and archival, and by a

Fig. 1: Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla Under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

thoughtful reading of these documents.” However — like the other reviewer, as it turned out — I had also expressed major reservations about the manuscript as it then stood. I had proposed, for example, cutting a long preamble to the book in which Reilly surveyed earlier medieval Iberian history; a clearer narrative arc; extensive stylistic interventions; and so forth. I had concluded my report by stating that “without a radical revision — and again, probably the hiring of an editor whom the author entrusts with the task of essentially rewriting this book — this text will remain indigestible.”

scholarship on the 11th century [Fig. 4]. When the conference finishes, I carry the box on the evening Amtrak train back to New York.

Ironically, at the time of writing those words, I had a creeping premonition. As editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, I was used to making extensive editorial revisions on difficult manuscripts (and not just in student papers). The letter from Reilly, which came completely out of the blue, now confirmed my premonition. The book had fallen into my lap. I had planned to move forward to the 16th century, but I was now summoned back to the 11th. I had never forgotten that experience of readi ng Queen Urraca in Madrid and never doubted the debt that we owed to Reilly. Picking up the gauntlet, I wrote to accept. I contacted Jerry Singerman, the editor at Penn who had handled initial communications with Reilly; Jerry assured me that with extensive revisions, the book might well be publishable. I set to work.

Scene 3: Philadelphia

I am in Bernard Reilly’s home in suburban Philadelphia. I have taken an Uber from the Penn campus, where the Medieval Academy of America is meeting. It is the late spring of 2018. Reilly has offered me a large box of 5-by-8 index cards relating to Fernando’s reign, which he has given me in a cardboard box that also contains a half-dozen books of recent

The index cards have been one of Reilly’s principal bulwarks for decades; I can see his handwriting evolve between the earlier phases of his career and the culminating stages. On them, he keeps notes on every charter that he reads — every record of property transactions, every grant of privilege — from the period in question, and on many other themes besides: the consolidation of medieval bishoprics, for instance, and the emergence of royal administration. Reilly was trained in an age before computers. Later, among his uncatalogued correspondence in the Hispanic Society of America (in Washington Heights), I discover a grant proposal from 1986, in which he reflects on the gradual technological shift. “The expansion of private documents [in 11th-century Spain],” he wrote, “is exponential. For this reason, the satisfactory control of my data will oblige me to depart from my beloved 5 x 8 index cards on which I was weaned as a scholar.” The computer age had dawned. “I shall require a computer memory of some 10-megabyte capacity for both data base [sic] and word processing demands. That need dictates a computer with an internal hard disk as most practical.”

I am not sure whether his request for a computer was granted, but it’s clear that his heart and soul were in the index cards. Over the coming months and years, in collaboration with Sarah McCleskey, head of resource and collection services at Hofstra’s Axinn Library, and with the invaluable assistance of a sequence of student aides, the index cards were digitized and posted on the Hofstra “Digital

Fig. 2: Bernard F. Reilly (1925-2021), Professor Emeritus, Villanova University.

Fig. 3: Presentation portrait of Fernando and Sancha, Liber diurnus (1055), Biblioteca Universitaria, Santiago de Compostela BY 609, Res.1.

Exhibits” website. Undergraduate students Andie Bigio, Molly Botros, Rocco DiStefano, and Kaylean Saravia all committed time and energy to this seemingly arcane process. Heartfelt gratitude is due to Honor Loeb (d. 2020), a Hofstra undergraduate student who was endlessly fascinated by medieval history and who also worked on the digitization. The index cards they worked on are an essential resource for me, as I dive into the process of reworking the manuscript.

In the process of rewriting — cutting, updating, amplifying, and restructuring — I have slightly nuanced some of Reilly’s positions: I have tweaked some of his statements about holy war, while maintaining his general position that relations between the Christian rulers and the Muslim rulers to the south were less binary, more complex, and even at times more collaborative, than previous scholars had assumed. I have returned to the charters, of which he had exceptional knowledge, to check details

charter evidence. The book enshrines some of his core convictions, among them his firm view that Fernando was focused more on the Iberian northwest than on “reconquest” on the Castilian frontier with the Muslim realms. Reilly had insisted, in a private letter to me, on the very secondary importance of Castile in Fernando’s thinking: “My own work points up the extreme concentration of Fernando on matters we would call Galician, or especially ‘Portuguese.’” The king’s Portuguese

Fig. 4: Index cards, Bernard F. Reilly Medieval Charters (https://digitalexhibits.hofstra.edu/s/charters/page/home

Scene 4: Astoria

At my desk, surrounded by photocopies, mugs of tea, and interlibrary loan books, I am finalizing the manuscript. I have completed another commitment (a series of video lectures on the Black Death and its aftermath for Wondrium, previously known as The Great Courses), and thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship and the generous support of Hofstra University, I can spend the 2022-2023 academic year fully focused on the book. It has proven a deeply rewarding experience: a chance to immerse myself in Spain a thousand years ago, to read a great deal of very recent scholarship with which Reilly was less familiar, and to revisit some of the original primary sources on which he drew. In the process, the manuscript has transformed.

and seek new evidence, and have integrated new editions that appeared in recent years. I have also retitled the book: It is now The Kingdom of León and Galicia Under Queen Sancha and King Fernando I. My intent is that the new title will signal the need to move beyond a focus on the singular figure of the medieval king, because scholarship has made it clear that we should envision 11th-century monarchy as a corporate, collective enterprise in which royal women (including queens such as Sancha) also played a variety of crucial roles, and which worked as a web of power extending beyond even the extended royal family. I have endeavored to give voice to the gender turn in current scholarship.

I remain in awe of Reilly’s insights, originality, and laborious analysis of the

campaigns will correspondingly play a significant role in this book, as will Galicia. I am now learning the Galician language with a tutor, from the Galician diasporic community in Buenos Aires, and am delighted to have been able to explore the centrality of medieval Galicia, so often perceived as a periphery.

Scene 5: Galicia

In a café in Santiago de Compostela, the capital city of Galicia and the endpoint of a famous pilgrimage route, I am sitting with Héitor Picallo. Héitor is a man of many talents, trained as a naval engineer but with a deep commitment to recovering the history and culture of medieval Galicia. He writes frequently for Nós Diario, an independent Galician-language newspaper, and recently orchestrated a beautifully

produced monthlong series of articles on the medieval Galician monarchy, whose significance is often downplayed by scholars focusing on the powerful “central” kingdom of Castile. He asks me to write a prologue for the book, which will be published based on these newspaper articles.

Héitor, who has been involved in designing luxury yachts for at least one global soccer superstar, is also an extraordinary artist. He offers to produce, for the book on the reign of Fernando and Sancha, an aquatint image of a fortification whose ruins survive to this day: the so-called Torres do Oeste, near the coastal Galician town of Catoira [Fig. 5]. This fortification was designed to fend off Viking raids from the 9th to the 11th centuries; the ruins stand at the mouth of one of the wide rivers (rías) that empty into the Atlantic, and today they are a beautiful

location to listen to the sound of waves lapping on the shore.

The book project that Bernard F. Reilly began, and which I have developed and completed, has aroused considerable interest in Galicia and Madrid. But I hope that The Kingdom of León and Galicia Under Queen Sancha and King Fernando I will be of interest to all readers curious about the medieval world, about monarchy, power, and the gradual emergence of the Spanish kingdoms. It will be published later this year by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In many respects, it has been a collaborative exercise, in which many players have had a formative role. Professor Reilly passed away in December 2021, at the age of 96. I trust that we have produced a work of which he would have been proud.

5: Castellum Honesti (Catoira,

permission.

Dr. Simon Doubleday holds a BA in History from Cambridge University and a PhD in History from Harvard University. He was founding editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies. He served as president of the American Association of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) and received a National Endowment for the Humanities individual research fellowship (2020-2021) and a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship (2022-2023).

Since arriving at Hofstra in 1998, Dr. Doubleday has taught a range of courses in medieval and early modern history and served as chair of the History Department. He has received two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants for teaching and course development. His 24-lecture streaming video series After the Plague: How Europe Recovered from the Black Death has been released on the Wondrium website.

Professor Doubleday’s principal areas of research are in the history of medieval Iberia. His most recent book is a biography of the Spanish ruler Alfonso X (1252-1284), The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance (Basic Books, 2015). He is also author of The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain (Harvard University Press, 2001), for which he was awarded Hofstra’s Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication. The Kingdom of León and Galicia Under Queen Sancha and King Fernando I, co-written with the late Bernard F. Reilly, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in July 2024.

Fig.

Galicia) Photo: Aquatint by Héitor Picallo, reproduced with artist’s

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ACCESSIBILIT Y

Hofstra is 100% program accessible to persons with disabilities.

JANUARY AND SUMMER SESSIONS

Hofstra offers a January session and three summer sessions between May and August.

Nondiscrimination Policy

TRUSTEES OF HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY

As of May 2024

OFFICERS

Donald M. Schaeffer, Chair

Martha S. Pope, Vice Chair

Michael Roberge,* Vice Chair

David S. Mack,* Secretary

Susan Poser, President

Alan J. Bernon,* Immediate Past Chair

MEMBERS

Kenneth Brodlieb

Susan Catalano

Frederick E. Davis Jr.*

Michael DeDomenico*

Michael P. Delaney*

Craig Dempster*

Arno H. Fried

Leo A. Guthart

Peter S. Kalikow*

Arthur J. Kremer

Diana E. Lake*

Kurt A. Lambert*

Randy Levine*

Kathryn V. Marinello*

Stella Mendes*

Janis M. Meyer*

Marilyn B. Monter*

Samuel Ramos*

Robert D. Rosenthal*

Debra A. Sandler*

Jason M. Savarese*

Michael Seiman*

Leonard H. Shapiro

Joseph Sparacio*

DELEGATE S

William Nirode, Speaker of the Faculty

Christopher Eliot, Chair, University Senate Executive Committee

Kathleen Wallace, Chair, University Senate Planning and Budget Committee

Heather Cohen,* President, Alumni Organization

Lincoln Anniballi, President, Student Government Association

Sydney Livingston, Vice President, Student Government Association

Wilbur Breslin, Trustee Emeritus

John J. Conefry Jr., Chair Emeritus

Lawrence Herbert,* Trustee Emeritus

Frank G. Zarb,* Chair Emeritus

*Hofstra alumni

Hofstra University is committed to extending equal opportunity to all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national or ethnic origin, physical or mental disability, marital or veteran status (characteristics collectively referred to as “Protected Characteristic”) in employment and in the conduct and operation of Hofstra University’s educational programs and activities, including admissions, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs. This statement of nondiscrimination is in compliance with Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, the Age Discrimination Act, and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations relating to nondiscrimination (“Equal Opportunity Laws”). The Equal Rights and Opportunity Officer is the University’s official responsible for coordinating its overall adherence to Equal Opportunity Laws. Questions or concerns regarding any of these laws, other aspects of Hofstra’s Nondiscrimination Policy, or regarding Title IX as it relates to reports against employees or other nonstudents, should be directed to the Equal Rights and Opportunity Officer, who also serves as the Title IX Coordinator for Employee Matters, at HumanResources@hofstra.edu, 516-463-6859, 205 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549. Student-related questions or concerns regarding Title IX should be directed to the Title IX Coordinator for Student Issues at StudentTitleIX@hofstra.edu, 516-463-5841, 127 Wellness & Campus Living Center, Hempstead, NY 11549. For additional contacts and related policies and resources, see hofstra.edu/eoe

Combating

Antisemitism in Europe in a Post-October 7th World

See page 18.