ADL Never Is Now Reflection

During the ADL Never is Now conference, they talked about a variety of things. The one that most stuck out to me was confronting antisemitism on campus. During this conference they spoke about how to recognize antisemitism, how to respond to antisemitism, and how to report it. These demonstrate civic and community engagement by helping to improve the campus by getting rid of antisemitism. If Jewish students do not feel comfortable, hopefully once enough of these incidents are reported they will be more comfortable. Administrators can also work with the student government to combat antisemitism. Student governments can adopt definitions of what antisemitism is to show the students and the teachers what antisemitism is. Before the student government can create a definition, students could have brought in antisemitic speakers and do antisemitic things. When it comes to Jewish students there is a double standard. Other hate bills could easily get passed in a few hours, yet when Jewish people tried to pass a bill they fought back. People tend to push back against Jewish people because the media can indoctrinate people and put them against Jewish people. People don’t really know what antisemitism is, this can cause people to actually be antisemitic themselves and hurt the Jewish community more.

    Technology and Social media can be a useful tool, but there are some drawbacks. Antisemitic misinformation can easily spread on social media. Social media can also be used to spread actual information about what antisemitism is, and how to stop it. The ADL also used social media to promote pro-Jewish posts to promote Jewish pride. Many Jewish students were afraid to express themselves, so they hid it. On social media, being proud of being a Jewish person was promoted and spread around. I found the ADL conference very interesting, I did not know there was so much antisemitism on college campuses. I liked learning about how Jewish people spread a message of acceptance and expressing yourself. 

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