Meeting the Moment Enhances Haverford’s Commitment to Open Dialogues on Campus
Photo by Patrick Montero.
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The campus-wide initiative builds on the College’s previous work to build a stronger sense of welcome and belonging for all who live, learn, and work on Haverford’s campus.
After a summer of intensive and collaborative planning, Haverford will introduce Meeting the Moment: Community in Dialogue at a pivotal moment for higher education. This new, College-wide initiative will advance Haverford’s enduring commitment to a campus of open dialogues by equipping the College community with the necessary tools and resources to contend with complex global issues, including the continuing tragedy in the Middle East and a turbulent U.S. election landscape.
Higher education as a whole has been charged with discovering effective ways to foster a sense of welcome and belonging for everyone who lives and learns on campuses across the country. Meeting the Moment builds upon the College’s previous work in this arena, says its organizer, Assistant Vice President for Institutional Equity and Access Sayeeda Rashid, to provide a robust, year-long slate of programming informed by a range of perspectives, experiences, and narratives.
“Throughout the past year and at pivotal moments in history, we have witnessed the ways that institutions of higher education are confronted with fundamental questions about ethics, integrity, and responsibilities intrinsic in learning and teaching, as well as ‘heart work’ that is a vital process for sustaining our ecosystem,” says Rashid. “Meeting the Moment serves as one of the platforms through which our College community members may engage, as we individually and collectively build on our knowledge, move through collective grief, and actively participate in solidarity movements.”
Much of the programming, says Rashid, was developed through cross-divisional collaboration with representatives from offices and divisions from across campus. It includes a series of community gatherings and facilitated discourses, trainings, book talks and panels, and opportunities to pursue civic engagement as Election Day approaches.
“Meeting the Moment is a College initiative, which means that we are all invited to learn with and from one another through programs, conversations, and educational opportunities,” says Vice President for Institutional Equity and Access Nikki Young. “To explore and expand our sources for learning, we have approached this initiative as a project of deep collaboration, anchored by conversations across divisions, departments, and programs. Such an effort represents — and calls for — a connection-based approach to learning in community.”
Above all, Young says, Meeting the Moment isn’t intended to be prescriptive and will remain nimble in its programming to ensure success throughout the coming academic year and, hopefully, beyond. That's why Meeting the Moment’s organizers anticipate the slate of all programming to evolve over the coming weeks and months. Plans to date should be viewed as a scaffold for ethical engagement by College community members who are encouraged to identify any additional events they might wish to see happen on campus. Proposals for activities focused on deepening understanding of pressing issues, providing contextual understanding, and building religious and cultural literacy in the context of diverse viewpoints can be submitted online and considered for funding.
"I am proud of these excellent efforts to enhance our dialogic capacities, through care, invitation, and expert facilitation," says College President Wendy Raymond. "Meeting the Moment invites us to build and exercise our muscles for gathering. I look forward to the positive impacts it will have for individual participants and our full campus community."
A Community in Dialogue
Meeting the Moment will be centered on a series of facilitated dialogues, focused on grief, Israel-Palestine, and critical inquiry, open to all College community members. They’re aimed at supporting students, faculty, and staff as they process and understand our current geopolitical climate and overarching historical narratives. Two remembrances of the lives lost since the events of October 7, 2023, will be held on back-to-back days to provide collective spaces for the community to come together in mourning and reflection.
Additionally, a series of Active Voice Dialogues invites community members to participate in open, honest conversations with one another about racism, faith and spirituality, and collective experiences of oppression and power.
Meeting the Moment’s larger slate of programming also includes existing programming, such as the Campus Read, which this year is James McBride’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, the 2023 recipient of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction and this year’s Sophie Brody Medal. Additional author events include a conversation with Wendy Pearlman, whose The Home I Wanted to Make draws on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrian refugees, and Dr. Maya Wind, author of 2024’s Towers of Ivory and Steel. The College will also celebrate 10 years of Reading Rainbow in December, a program that invites community members to present books that have profoundly impacted their lives.
A series of trainings and workshops that explore antisemitism, Islamophobia, U.S. presidential politics, and activism will be led by organizations and individuals from an array of viewpoints to provide a comprehensive view of our contemporary issues. They include the Diaspora Alliance, 18 Million Rising, Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, the Anti-Defamation League, Project Shema, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Philadelphia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
