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"One thing that I have mixed feelings about is when something comes up in the classroom that has to do with minority religions or ethnicities, and they point to you as the spokesperson for the Jews. I think it's important to use your resources in your class like that, but it's also not good to say, 'You are the spokesperson for all the Jews.' I have one viewpoint and it's important to realize that no one Jew can stand for everyone. Because we're here in the South, there's probably only going to be one Jewish student sitting there in a class. That was the way it was in several of my religion classes. I was the only Jew, and so when Judaism came up, everybody swiveled."
"I think it depends on the person more than what classroom you're in. I took a literature class where there were only about 15 people in the classroom, and it was very nice. It was very interactive. The way [the professor] looked at it was, because everybody was different, it's going to be a great classroom because it's a classroom that's so diverse. We're going to have that much more to talk about and that much more input to have- and he was very nice about it, you know. He didn't make me feel any different even though I'm Muslim. Everybody was the same basically. Sort of, 'You're different, I accept that, let's get beyond that: we're here to talk about this class.' "
The diversity of UNC's student body also includes diversity of religious beliefs. International students from all parts of the world study here, many of them from countries that are not predominantly Christian. Although Christians are still in the majority in the United States, you will also have American students with traditions and beliefs that reflect the diversity of world religions.
In the US, Christian holy days are usually celebrated as official university holidays. This puts non-Christians at a disadvantage since classes are usually held on their religion's major holy days, such as Yom Kippur or Ramadan. For this reason it is important to accommodate non-Christian students who have missed assignments, exams or discussions in class due to religious commitments. You can arrange an office hour with a student so that he or she can catch up on what happened in class discussion, or assign that student another "informant" who was present and is willing to share notes. Allowing students to make up any exams, quizzes or homework assignments due on that day eliminates the need for the student to choose between academic excellence and his or her religion.
Because of the religious diversity in the US and the strength of some of your students' faith, religion can surface as a topic in any class. Criticizing the beliefs or practices of any religion when such a criticism is not important to the content of the course can unnecessarily alienate students who hold those beliefs. You may, of course, be teaching a class where such issues are the direct content of the course. In a philosophy or a religious studies class, for example, it may be necessary to make a critique of a specific belief or practice. If this is the case, make sure to show respect for those who hold such beliefs. It is always useful to point out the difference between faith and proof; there are many religious values and truths that cannot be proven by science or logic. Since the dominant language of the university is logic, certain articles of a religion's faith may seem illogical or contradictory. This, of course, does not affect the religious truth of those articles of faith.
Finally, especially when the course content is about religion, remember that no student can speak for an entire religion just because she or he has a particular religious background. The considerable diversity of beliefs and practices in all the major world religions means that no student can adequately represent a whole religion. Just as no woman can speak for all women and no African American can speak for all African Americans, no Muslim or Jew can speak for all Muslims or all Jews. Expecting such a thing from your students can alienate them from the rest of the class even if your intention is to bring them into the discussion by letting them talk about their own experience. If the student is willing to discuss his or her religion, it can become a fruitful point of departure, but generalizations about an entire religion drawn from the experience of a few students in your class can be more harmful than useful.
Suggestions for Your Classroom
Adapted from: Teaching a Diverse Student Body (p. 39), by N. Loevinger, 1994, University of Virginia.
Many of the non-Christian religious
holidays vary from year to year. Christians use the Gregorian Calendar, which
is the official calendar in the US. However Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus
have their own calendars and calculate their religious holidays from them.
Christian Holidays
Christmas: December 25, Jesus' birthday
Ash Wednesday: Wednesday that falls 40 days before Easter Sunday.
Holy Thursday: Thursday before Easter Sunday, Commemoration of the Last Supper.
Good Friday: Friday before Easter Sunday; Anniversary of Crucifixion.
Easter: First Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, March 21.
Note: It is unlikely that
any student would need to be excused for Ash Wednesday or Holy Thursday. Good
Friday is often counted as a holiday, although sometimes the Easter
weekend includes Easter Monday rather than Good Friday. The other holidays
listed are usually already official holidays.
Jewish Holidays
Rosh Hashanah: September-October. This is the Jewish New Year marking the beginning of the 10 days of Judgment. Considered a High Holiday.
Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement, marks the end of 10 Days of Judgment. Considered a High Holiday, the holiest day of the year.
Hanukkah: Beginning of December. Marks the military victory of the Maccabees, the first Jews to fight for their religion.
Passover: March/April; coincides with Easter, since Jesus' trial and crucifixion took place during the seven days of Passover. Passover marks the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.
Note: Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year for Jewish students, so you should make every effort to excuse students from your class on that day and to give them the opportunity to make up any missed work . Students might fast on Yom Kippur, even if they do come to class.
Jewish holidays start at sundown
on the evening before the day of the holiday. Sabbath starts at sundown
on Friday evening, Yom Kippur services start at sundown on the day before
Yom Kippur.
Muslim Holidays
Ramadan: A month of fasting to celebrate the 9th month of the Muslim calendar in which the Qur'an was revealed. Students may fast during the day for the month of Ramadan, even if they come to class.
Eid-ul-fitr: Last day of Ramadan.
Eid-ul-ahza: End of the "hajj" or pilgrimage to Mecca. Commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac and takes place in the last month of the Muslim calendar year.
Eid-ul-maulid-in-nabiy:
The prophet Mohammed's birthday.
Other Religions
The observance of most Buddhist and Hindu holidays should not interfere with your class schedule. There is a slight chance that an Indian student might wish to go home early to celebrate Divali (the Hindu New Year Festival of Lights) with his or her family. It takes place in October or November.
Adapted from: Teaching a Diverse Student Body (p. 39), by N. Loevinger, 1994, University of Virginia.
Many potential clashes of values
in the classroom come from differing religious backgrounds. Ethnic traditions
and political orientations, however, can also influence the tone and directions
of discussion in your classes. Just as with religions that are not your own,
do not criticize political or traditional beliefs unless those beliefs are potentially
hurtful to others in the class, or unless such criticism is part of the class
content. Here, establishing an initial "contract" with your students
to show respect for others becomes useful, both in the way you handle the topic,
and as a reminder to your students. One can examine the reasons for a political
conclusion without offending the person who has reached such a conclusion.
Quotes from interviews with Muslim
students on campus
"If anything, I find that TAs and professors are very careful around me, about what they do say. They don't want to make any assumptions so they're like, you know, 'So what is it like for you, for where you're coming from?' Especially in literature classes or English classes they're trying to take those things that we're reading and kind of view it in on everyday life. They say, 'Everybody's everyday life is a little different, what is like for you?' They try to tie that in."
"Sometimes I wish they were a little less careful. You know, I mean, if anything I wish that they were a little more educated about the religion so they wouldn't have to be so edgy around it, because honestly it's the largest religion in the world. We shouldn't be so unaware of what's going on with it. I mean so what if the majority of the people aren't [Muslim] in the United States. There is still a lot of [Muslim] population here."
"It [a humanities course studying the Muslim world] was focusing on Muslims and often the instructor tried to see if we had any input into the class. She made us feel slightly out of the mix. Sort of like 'second instructors.' "
"I don't think it was necessarily negative for the class. It was supposed to be informative, and that's what we want to do; give you information about the religion, but from a personal point of view, everyone starts feeling like you're not really a student in the class. Because it's about history, and often we don't know very much about history: that's why we signed up for the class. That's exactly the issue. That's why we're there too. And [the professor] almost made like we were the end all, be all of the course. Like, 'If you're having problems with any of the material, you know, why don't you talk to these students over here, maybe they could help you out.' "
"We didn't really have the chance to talk, and get along with the other students in the class. They would tend to see me as someone they would go to for information, but not really talk to or try to understand, not a discussion person in the class, but a teach-me person. So it got to be a little uncomfortable sometimes. I learned some things about how people feel about Muslims."
"I had a situation in a class-it was a history class, and the instructor refused to see how the Middle East was still developing while Europe was going through the dark ages. And how the Muslim world, all the literature, the sciences, [the Muslims] kept it alive. If it hadn't been for Muslim scholars, you would not be reading Socrates and Plato today. There's European history in one corner, and there's South African history in one corner, you know, everybody's niche in the world. He didn't see how they all worked together. It was very important to know that if there was not a lot going on in the dark ages in Europe, well then, why didn't we focus on what was going on the world? Because the scientists of the world at that time were Muslim. Still, people don't see the world as the world, you know, they see it as this corner, this corner, this corner and this corner. That's what I think he was picking up on and he didn't like the fact that I tried to open his mind about it at all.
Ever since I had that professor,
I mean, he really opened my eyes. I thought that, if he can feel this way,
and he's a professor, how many other people feel like that? There isn't a
world tradition, there's only the European tradition. So I thought maybe a
class that brought all of that together, a professor who saw the world as
the world, not just this history and this history. Because, why did the Renaissance
start in Italy? It was because of their interaction with the Arabs. People
don't see that. They don't recognize that catalyst. They don't recognize that
who were these Europeans trading with? They were just trading. But who were
they trading with? They were trading with an open 'what.' You know, they weren't
trading with South America, they were trading with Muslims. I just thought
it was very strange, how you could take history and see it as such a one-sided
thing."
"In my French conversation class we have people from Egypt, and like there's eight of us, and a girl from Israel, and me and there were a few others, and we did presentations the whole year and talked about our cultures. It livened up the conversation. It was an informal class, and I think because it was honors. The point was, we were doing French, but we were discussing each other's cultures. It was a lot of fun. We learned a lot and it was just welcoming, I mean, everybody was just so different and open in that class. Of course, I credit that to the TA. "
"On the whole, I feel we've been treated pretty fairly on campus."
"In this class that we had together, most of the Muslims were South Asian, or Middle Eastern. I guess by virtue of the fact that we are Muslim, we kind of grouped ourselves together anyway. We did a lot of it ourselves, and then I think, people projected what we were doing- they went along with it also."
"It's just the way it is, all of us, we tend to kind of hang out together. There's distinct areas, a distinct population, where we'll be able to find other Muslims, other Pakistanis, South Asians, or Middle Eastern. It's a more comfortable environment we all know each other. This is not negative, this is not positive, you know, like stays with like. You just kind of look for who and where you see part of yourself. That's why the Muslims on campus, they're probably the Muslims' best friends."
Quotes from interviews with Jewish
students on campus
"We feel pretty much included. But a lot of times tests are scheduled for holidays so I'm not there in class. It's never been a problem, I always go to the teacher and they say, 'That's fine, you can take it before or after,' and it's never a problem but, it's little things like that that make you notice that you're different."
"Right, Saturday exams are a good example for me, and all the holidays that come sort of in a rush at the beginning of the school year. All the High Holidays, and the holidays afterwards on which I don't go to class. I had two Saturday exams last year, both of them were in my religion classes. The instructors were understanding. They were religion professors, so I would hope they would be."
"I think teachers have been doing a great job, being helpful and understanding in terms of diversity."
"We were talking about Judaism and [the teacher] would ask questions and that's something I'm very interested in and so I tended to participate a lot in the class. But, I found it really being more uncomfortable than comfortable a lot of times because the majority of the students there were not Jewish, and he directed the class more towards them rather than toward the Jews. Which was fine, and I understand why he did that. But it was more like 'I'm interested in what the non-Jews have to say, I'm not interested in what the Jews have to say.' "
"Yeah there are [Jewish professors on campus] but they're not doing Jewish things. I was kind of surprised at some of the names I saw on the teacher's list when I used it last year. When I started writing notes to people [associated with Hillel] and it was like wow, they're Jewish?"
"[In one class] the topics we were talking about were very [controversial]. It was a fine line we talked about how Jews feel about Jesus. Just having that discussion in class was real volatile. I mean I thought he taught the class really well, but because of the topics we talked about, it made me uncomfortable because the majority of the class was Christian."
"In my speech classes this summer, I did one of my speeches on Judaism. It was just sort of worrisome to hear things from some of the devoutly Christian members of the group about some of the things I said concerning Jesus and so on. They were a little bit miffed I think. It wasn't really personal, [they just said] something wishy-washy about that some of the things I said were sacrilegious; of course they weren't sacrilegious to my religion but. "
"They seemed like ignorant reactions and directly attacking reactions. I think it was somewhat of both; they were sort of mad at a religion. I've met people who have been mad at particular religions because they didn't believe in Jesus."
"I don't know if I'd really want the teacher to do that much in a situation like that. Other than saying "I don't want this discussion in my office or in my class" or something like that, then that's fine, but I don't think there's really anything that they can do or that I would want them to do. I really wouldn't want them imposing their views on me and the other person probably wouldn't want that either."
"I'd kind of like the teacher to say a one-sentence thing like, 'We all have to tolerate other religions even if you might not believe in them yourself.' Maybe that also this is not the time and the place to be doing that."
"I guess it's how you perceive yourself, at least for me. No one's out there looking to crucify you or to say bad things. It's there, it's hidden. You can find it if you really try I guess, and if you search it out, you will find people who are anti-Semitic. But for the most part, people just don't understand. In my freshman year, my roommate thought that Jewish men were circumcised at 13. They didn't know. I had to say, "No, that's just wrong." I mean, it's just knowledge, and being in the South- I come from New York from an area with a staunchly Jewish population, and in my high school is about 50 or 60% Jewish. This is completely different there's obviously a difference. There's nothing bad, it's just different. Unless you try to find bad things, you're really not going to find them cause no one's out to get you."
"I had an incident in my freshman year in our dormitory. There were three guys out in the hall, playing the guitar and singing and they were singing about hanging a Jewish man. They obviously didn't know I was sitting in my room studying for a test. So I went to my RA and it turns out that they had threatened the RA who lived upstairs on the third floor, who was Jewish, already. They were going to get kicked out the next weekend. So there is an example where I was sitting next door, minding my own business and I observed it, I didn't have to go out and look for it."
"Yeah, I agree, when I felt it the most was in my freshman year when I was in the dorms. Just nothing negative happened, but, it was just the feel of the Christian community. They come knocking on the door and say, 'Inter-varsity's tonight, won't you come join us?' and it wasn't anything negative that they did, it was just the feeling that there was more of them than me. You know that they don't understand I'm finding myself every week, teaching somebody something about Judaism, something basic to me, that they don't know. In a way, you know, that's great I can teach them, but in a way it's like, another part of me is tired."
"There's no Jewish community down here, you can't really move in those circles."
"Hillel really makes a difference on campus. Last year we did an interfaith Shabat and at least 200 people showed up which is incredible for us. I think that stuff like that will teach people. Just having Hillel in the newspaper. The DTH covers the holidays and stuff like that as they do any other minority group. I think that does make a difference, having our name painted on the block out there."
"It puts the weight on you to educate. I mean, you can say that education is the key to this problem but, how do you get those students into it?"
"You're not looking at residential life, I mean, Christmas trees up, and Christmas decorations all around. It makes you want to put your Hanukkah stuff up even more, but it's not the same. Hanukkah is a little celebration compared to Christmas which is a huge celebration."
"I think beyond education is integration. The fact that, you know, it's about four percent Jewish population on campus. You have to think about the fact that, how are you going to educate people if they haven't even met a Jewish person? I mean that's the hardest part. In my suite, they'd never met a Jewish person before."
"Yeah, my brother's roommate here his first year as a freshman thought Jewish people were the same thing as Jesuits."
"Yeah, or Jehovah's Witnesses."
"Yeah, one of those two."
"Until you meet a Jewish person, you're going to know the stereotypes and the fears, you grow up with them. Then maybe once you meet someone, you'll care enough to be educated about it."
"But then it may or may not come up in daily conversation. I mean with my summer sublet it took all this summer for her to finally ask me what I was talking about when I was talking about meat dishes and milk dishes and changing the kitchen over to kosher when she leaves. So I explained this all to her and she was like 'Oh, well this is pretty easy. I understand it now!' I thought, 'Yeah, it's really not that difficult. You could have asked me at any point.' But if I'm just talking to a friend, Judaism may or may not come into play. "
"The role of evangelical groups
on campus do affect freshmen more than people from other years, because
you're probably not used to them. It really feels like they're very strong,
and they just feel like a threat sometimes. I don't think they should be stopped
in any way, but I just feel that their approaches are sometimes real offensive.
That's something I know that teachers don't really have anything do with,
but there might be clash in the classroom because of a history at the dorm."
"Don't schedule anything on any holidays period. You don't have to cancel classes, but you don't have to schedule any tests or anything. Or have papers due. Or even the day after a holiday, cause I don't write [during Jewish holidays]. "
"I think that's the ideal, but the practical part is, expect people to come up and ask you to change it and reschedule it for them, and be very open to that. "
"No teacher's going to go around with a book of every religion's holidays and say, 'Well I can't schedule it here cause of this and that.' Basically just go about your business and accept the fact not everyone's going to make it, and that everyone has a different agenda and everyone has different priorities. School isn't always the first one when it comes to religion. Religion sometimes supersedes school. As long as you accept that."
"I think it's important for teachers to know that the High Holidays, which are at the beginning of the school year, are the most important holidays for the Jews. For me and for a lot of people it's most holy, and for a lot of people that's the only time they observe. So if there's a time not to schedule a test, that's the time not to schedule it."
"None of those other holidays matter as much, you know. People who may never, ever, ever go at any other time of the year to do something with the Jews- they will do it on High Holidays."
"What else they could do? Maybe incorporate it more, have more Jewish classes, not just Religion 24 and 140. I took a Mysticism class, and not once did they talk about Jewish mysticism. It wasn't focused on. I was sort of expecting at least a mention, but the teacher had no knowledge. I expected at least a chapter on it. And there's no Hebrew course, as there's no Arab course. You know, it really leaves out the Middle East."
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Last Updated: May 18, 2004