Following Holocaust Remembrance event boycott, JMU looks to move forward ‘Action makes the difference’

By CHARLOTTE MATHERLY & ASHLYN CAMPBELL The Breeze

Last month, 24 Jewish faculty, faculty emeriti and staff signed a letter to JMU President Jonathan Alger stating their intent to boycott the university’s Holocaust Remembrance event, citing concerns that the planning of the event “disrespected and disparaged Jewish individuals, dismissed Jewish participation and failed to reflect the inclusive values that JMU purports to foster,” according to the letter.

The letter brought forward several concerns from the Jewish faculty. Among them were a lack of Jewish representation on the planning committee and the tone of the event. One Jewish member of the planning committee and two other Jewish people who were involved but not officially on the committee resigned following concerns about the planning process, several sources told The Breeze.

The Jan. 26 lecture series included poetry and musical selections alongside expert speakers Alan Berger from Florida Atlantic University and Phyllis Leffler from the University of Virginia, who discussed the legacies of the Holocaust and how people can combat antisemitism and white supremacy and be “ambassadors of the truth,” Berger said.

The event that ultimately occurred was slightly altered from the planned version, according to earlier programs sent to The Breeze on Jan. 25. Heather Coltman, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, was slated to play piano at the event, but according to a statement sent to The Forward, a Jewish news site, she decided not to participate in the performance out of respect for the concerns raised. The full story about the event is available on The Breeze’s website.

Now following the event and the aftermath, The Breeze spoke with faculty members and JMU administration about how they plan to move forward.

In a Feb. 1 interview, Rachelle Dorne, the occupational therapy program director and a member of the planning committee who resigned, said those who resigned met with members of the provost’s office Jan. 25 to discuss the concerns raised in the letter.

“Personally, I felt as though, you know, concerns were heard,” Dorne said. “We were listened to, I think I came away with thinking — I’m looking for action now … Words are good. Words are helpful. Action makes the difference.”

Josh Shulruff, who advises JMU Hillel, a Jewish student organization, was one of those involved with the planning who resigned, though he wasn’t officially on the committee. In a Feb. 1 interview with The Breeze, he said he felt those in the meeting — he named Sparkman-Key; David Kirkpatrick, interim executive director of the Madison Center for Civic Engagement; and Malika Carter-Hoyt, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion and JMU’s chief diversity officer — were sincere in their effort to listen to their concerns and move forward.

Dorne said in the Jan. 25 meeting, the members that resigned didn’t provide a “specific roadmap” but more general suggestions on how to move forward, focusing on outreach.

“We want the university to be a partner in that roadmap and not give them a checklist in the sense that if we do just these things, you should be happy,” Dorne said. “I am not a spokesperson for all the Jewish faculty and staff and/or students who are on campus and feeling disenfranchised. So I think there needs to be overall outreach, listening and then talking with the community about what the next steps would be.”

As for Shulruff, he said he’s focused on helping connect JMU with the Harrisonburg Jewish community and student leaders and hopes these conversations will happen.

“I think that would go a long way to showing a lot of people that this is taken seriously and that people are serious about moving forward to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Shulruff said.

Abe Goldberg, associate professor of political science and former director of the James Madison Center for Civic Engagement at JMU, helped plan last year’s Holocaust Remembrance event, which he explained in detail in a Feb. 1 article from The Harrisonburg Citizen. He wasn’t involved in the 2023 planning committee but said in an interview with The Breeze that he believes JMU’s response could’ve been more “productive.”

“I don’t know that a defensive response would be as productive as one that brings people into conversations to listen, to learn, and to collaborate and to reconcile,” Goldberg said.

The Breeze requested interviews with Sparkman-Key, Kirkpatrick, Coltman and Carter-Hoyt. JMU’s executive director of communications and university spokesperson, Mary-Hope Vass, said JMU would “not be conducting interviews on the Holocaust Remembrance event.” After further requests from The Breeze, Vass arranged an interview with Carter-Hoyt.

Carter-Hoyt said in a Feb. 13 interview with The Breeze that she’s had conversations with “several individuals” and has reached out to another to discuss concerns and moving forward. She declined to say who exactly she’s talking to, saying she hadn’t heard back from them after asking for permission to talk about their conversations.

“There is an accord between myself and entities and/or individuals to make sure that we are seamless in our conversation with each other before we speak to media,” Carter-Hoyt said. She added that she’s invited “a consortium of individuals that are most directly related to this matter” to an in-person private meeting intended to be a safe and secure place to discuss concerns and has blocked off time to meet with them, but she said she hasn’t received a response as of the time of her Feb. 13 interview with The Breeze.

“I’ll just keep earmarking time until I hear back because I think it’s important to make sure that we’re continually discovering knowledge about each other,” Carter-Hoyt said.

When asked whether there are any other plans to move forward outside of these conversations and for next year, Carter-Hoyt said JMU plans to continue to “stick to process” to make sure people feel included, like allowing people an opportunity to “self-select,” to offer up their services to committees and other projects. Even if someone doesn’t have time to serve on a committee but has expressed interest, Carter-Hoyt said, they’ll be invited to connect with someone on a committee.

As for the Holocaust Remembrance event, in a statement sent to The Breeze by Vass on Jan. 25, Carter-Hoyt said people weren’t “included or excluded explicitly based on a particular protected characteristic,” referring to the selection process for the planning committee.

“Committee members were selected based on substantive expertise and commitment to the creation of an event that properly marks the occasion,” she said in the statement.

She said in her Feb. 13 interview JMU allows self-selection based on substantive expertise partly because federal law, specifically Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

The other reason for it is to encourage an “interdisciplinary model” at JMU, she said.

“You may be a chemist, but you may like to read Walt Whitman, and you may really like prose and poetry. If you do, if you have an inclination for that, there are spaces that should be inviting you in because of your interest and not disallowing you because you are a chemist,” Carter-Hoyt said. “What we should be doing is inviting people not only on their expertise, because obviously people study certain things, right? But we also should be making sure that we are bringing people with a commitment to making sure that something is properly marked or properly identified, and so I think both is important.”

JMU history department head Maura Hametz, who wasn’t involved with the planning of this year’s event but specializes in Jewish studies and was involved in writing the letter, said she hoped conversations moving forward can help create representation for Jewish culture.

“I hope that the conversation would lead to better understanding to avoid misunderstandings in the future,” Hametz said, “and to move forward with a way for all voices to be heard on campus.”

As the university and community move forward, Goldberg said he believes JMU has the opportunity to collaborate and connect with Jewish faculty who care about working with others to create educational inclusive programming.

“I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that something really positive can come from all of this,” Goldberg said. “But I know that there are people who are eager, and we’re about the opportunity to do some good, important work here surrounding remembrance of the Holocaust, both for our campus community and also for our broader Harrisonburg Rockingham Community.”

CONTACT Charlotte Matherly at breezeeditor@ gmail.com and Ashlyn Campbell at breezeinvestigations@gmail.com. For more coverage of JMU and Harrisonburg news, follow the news desk on Twitter @BreezeNewsJMU.