A hush came over my religious-studies classroom earlier this year as two international students, both from the Middle East, shared their experience attending Mass at a large Catholic church. They began their account, part of an ethnographic assignment for our “Religion in Philadelphia” course, with a description of the church’s demographics, the priest’s sermon, and the parish’s interactions with its urban Philadelphia neighborhood. But then their story took an unexpected turn.
They were enjoying the beautiful building and taking in unfamiliar practices — holy water, repeated kneeling and standing, communion lines — when a parishioner photographed them with her cellphone and then abruptly left. After the mass ended, they ran into her outside the church, where she asked them if they spoke Arabic — yes — and if they were Catholic — no. When the students walked to their vehicle, multiple police cars stopped them.
Despite being non- native English speakers, they managed to explain their presence with the aid of my assignment sheet. It was a difficult and stressful experience for them, especially since I had assured them that this church welcomed visitors.
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As their fellow students expressed shock and distress, I couldn’t help reflecting on my role in their ordeal. Despite the fact that I inform religious communities of the assignment and give students detailed guidelines for conducting ethnography, I wonder: Can I continue to assign interfaith exchanges to my diverse students in today’s xenophobic climate?
As the nation experiences a surge of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim nativism, the role that international students play in fostering mutual understanding is more critical than ever. In the 2014-15 academic year, American universities hosted nearly a million foreign students, with about 60,000 coming from Saudi Arabia, 11,000 from Iran, and 9,000 from Kuwait. Temple University, where I teach, had more than 3,000 international students from nearly 120 countries that year. International-student enrollment gives young people from all over the world a close look at America’s culture and diversity. They receive an education that broadens their experiences and enlarges their opportunities. In return, they give American students one of the most important gifts college can provide — a larger view of the world.
When respectful discussion is fostered, international students open up about their struggles, both on campus and in the community. My Arab and Muslim students talk about how it feels to study in the United States while Donald Trump calls for a ban on Muslim immigration and his supporters call for Muslims to be expelled or tracked. At the same time, the students’ diverse experiences and perspectives add nuance to the class’s understanding of Islam.
My American students already know there are liberal and conservative Christians, observant and nonobservant Jews. But listening to their Muslim peers describe different cultural practices — feminist as well as traditional gender expectations, strict or flexible dietary-code adherence — and voice a range of conflicting opinions on hijab, the practice of wearing a headscarf or veil; polygamy; alcohol; and many other issues shows them that Islam, too, is not monolithic.
But open communication can be hard to foster in culturally diverse classrooms. Beyond the language barrier, global students bring different fundamental assumptions about their roles and responsibilities in class. Different cultural narratives lead to a range of assumptions about the nature of society, government, gender, and justice. And some international students refrain from speaking aloud because they assume there is one expected answer, or they’re uncomfortable with debate as pedagogy. When such differences go unacknowledged, they can lead to chaotic and stressful discussions in which students feel that their own perspectives are marginalized.
Helping students develop an awareness of their own cultural narratives and differences requires concrete strategies. These include explicitly clarifying the assumptions and methodologies of academic inquiry, breaking down required skills into components that are addressed at the assignment level, and, most crucially, making the classroom a safe place for discussion so relationships can grow and empathetic engagement can occur.
The role that international students play in fostering mutual understanding is more critical than ever.
In my experience, I’ve found several keys to fostering constructive discussion. The first is to establish that no class member should be asked, or assumed, to speak for a whole group. Whatever a student’s national, ethnic, or religious identity appears to be, each student has a unique set of experiences and a right to privacy. That means no presumptions should be made about politics, religious commitment, or identity.
Another key is to allow students to set further guidelines as a group, soliciting and then formalizing boundaries for discussion. By helping to create ground rules, students become invested in the course and begin to trust it as a safe environment to try out ideas and ask questions.
A third key is to instruct students in how to locate and contextualize their comments, and to model such behavior. At a minimum, this involves indicating whether statements are based on experience, observation, academic research, or some other source.
In my class, we work together to add specificity and limit claims. This allows us to reconfigure sweeping statements like, “Christians believe that Jesus is returning soon,” to precise ones like, “When I was growing up, I was taught in Baptist churches in Western Pennsylvania that Jesus is returning soon.” Such specificity becomes particularly important when trying to make sense of a large range of cultural practices. Provocative statements like, “Don’t Muslim women hide when men enter the home?” can be refashioned into statements based on research or observation, like: “I read in an article by Dr. Aminah Beverly McCloud that African-American Muslim women in Philadelphia in the 1970s often moved to the kitchen when men entered the home.”
In response, students share carefully contextualized experiences, like this true example: “When I was growing up in a Sunni home in Kuwait, my mother moved to a private area of the home when unrelated men entered.” Or, “In my extended family in Turkey, women welcomed friends and neighbors into their homes and ate with them as long as male relatives were also present.” By using detailed contextualization, students learn to qualify claims, avoid broad stereotyping, evaluate the reliability of sources, and hear one another’s comments as unique experiences rather than contests of opinions.
Despite the climate of increasing fear and violence, I will continue to give my students carefully designed ethnographic assignments and encourage them to share personal experiences in class. Nothing can replace seeing other cultural practices, listening to each other, and reasoning together.
At the most basic level, our classrooms must challenge preconceptions and stereotypes that can be blamed on inexperience — and on the politicians who benefit from nativist fear.
Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez is an assistant professor of religion at Temple University and the author of The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (UNC Press, 2016).
