“I’m trying to choose my words cautiously,” says Dorota Glowacka, a professor at the University of King’s College. Glowacka is discussing the exceptional moments university campuses have been experiencing in the immediate and prolonged aftermath of Hamas’ violent attack against Israelis, on Oct. 7.
In October, Glowacka was teaching a course that King’s offers every year, called Genocide: Comparative Perspectives. The course is designed around two key questions surrounding the term “genocide”: “Which atrocities are included in that concept and why,” and, “Does the fact that the term was coined in a specific context (after the Second World War) limit its applicability?”
Glowacka is choosing her words cautiously to describe how the atmosphere in her class has shifted since Oct. 7. One-third of the way into the semester for Glowacka and her 18 students, Hamas broke through the Israel-Gaza boundary, killed hundreds of civilians and took 150 hostages. What followed has led South Africa to bring a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice, and for Canada to come ever closer to demanding an unequivocal ceasefire from Israel in Gaza. What followed has included a near-constant air attack from Israel on Palestinians in Gaza, ground invasions, border closures, bombings of hospitals and schools, and a blockade of aid, water, medicine, power and food, with over 33,000 Palestinians killed by Israel's attacks as of April 4.
“In a class on comparative perspectives on genocide,” Glowacka says, “we could not pretend that this was not happening.”
Glowacka designed the course to compare and examine genocidal violence that has occurred prior to and following the Holocaust. Glowacka is not saying the Holocaust is a paradigmatic genocide, “but it has been construed as such at least since the creation of the Genocide Convention” in 1948.
“The Holocaust is a canvas against which we discuss the other genocides and we also raise the question, ‘Why does the Holocaust continue to be this paradigm?’ We critique that model and talk extensively about settler-colonial genocide, specifically in Canada, and we ask whether slavery should be considered a case of genocide under the convention.”
As a matter of fact, in September 2023 Glowacka had considered how to incorporate the war on Ukraine into class discussions. That war is being called a potential case of genocide by both Russia and Ukraine. Glowacka brought in an outside instructor from Saint Mary’s University to discuss this in a lecture.
“But then October 7 happened.” Glowacka says both this course and another course she was teaching at the time, called Representations of the Holocaust: Bearing Witness, became more difficult to teach, “in the sense that when [I] teach difficult material—and I teach a lot of material on gender-based violence, which is both my research topic and I also think is central for every genocide—I develop strategies to distance myself so that I can engage with the material in a way that’s productive for the students.
“But when these events started occurring and became all consuming for many students in my class, and for myself as well, that [distancing] became very difficult. Very difficult.”
Which is why she’s choosing her words cautiously. On Oct. 8, university campuses were having “very difficult—I wouldn’t even say conversations—not even debates or disputes,” says Glowacka, looking for the right word to describe the ambiance. How universities have responded to this moment, “was, and continues to be, a very conflicted way of engaging with the topic, and our campus is no exception.”
“We have many Jewish students who, in the aftermath of Oct. 7, felt very insecure and frightened, and we were trying to comfort them and provide some sense of safety. There are many students very concerned for what’s happening in Gaza—and now it has assumed even greater proportions.”
Glowacka says that at King’s, like elsewhere, there were very few opportunities to have any open dialogue about complicated emotions, “which we finally had,” she says of last month’s lecture and student lunch at King’s with the co-authors of The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians don’t want to know about each other.
Last fall, Glowacka knew she wanted to create a space where such dialogue could occur, “in this void of opportunities.” She decided to limit it to her class, to make it as safe as possible for students to speak openly.
“I invited everyone to participate in that conversation and we had a sharing circle,” which Glowacka has done in her classes before when difficulties arise. “I drew on that strategy and, in this case because I wanted to make sure everyone had space to speak, I had a peace stone.”
Glowacka invited one of her King’s CSP colleagues to come to that class and sit with students. They all sat in a circle and passed the peace stone around. Whoever held the stone expressed their views. “I thought it was productive and even, for me, an inspiring conversation because it was so respectful of one another’s voices and opinions.”
Glowacka feels her approach was worthwhile but “it's just a drop in a very huge bucket.” She is uncertain of how to do more when she teaches the course again next year.
She will be considering how to address the void of opportunities in productive ways like creating more space in the course “to convey more historical information about the history of Zionism, the history of the Nakba,” although Glowacka did assign a chapter from the book The Holocaust and the Nakba. “In devising the course, I will allocate more space to that.”
Glowacka has been teaching Genocide: Comparative Perspectives for 10 years. She says enrollment fluctuates. Last fall she had 18 students in the class. But on Mar. 20, 2024 when registration for the 2024/25 opened, “ in the first two hours, the class was full–which indicates to me that the ongoing war is a definitely a stimulus and that indicates to me that students are specifically interested in this idiom of genocide as it applies to this war.
“I will definitely have to think about the course content very carefully.”
It’s not unique to King’s, Halifax or Canada that students and universities alike are struggling to talk through emotions brought up and exacerbated by the war on Gaza. Students are now three generations removed from the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Nakba and the formation of Israel and likely two generations removed from the six-day “Arab-Israeli” war of 1967.
Glowacka says that it’s not an entirely new phenomenon for Jewish people in the diaspora to struggle with their feelings about the Israeli state, although that struggle looks very different for everyone considering where people live and the specifics of their connections to those who were alive during the Holocaust. “I always have a relatively large contingent of Jewish students in my class, and I’m also Jewish—my father was a Holocaust survivor but I grew up in Poland,” where the discourse of the Holocaust, of Jewishness itself, was non-existent, or covered up, Glowacka says.
“I can’t compare my experiences to those of my Canadian or American students,” she says, but “I would always have students who grew up in Jewish homes, very often with relatives who were Holocaust survivors, went to Jewish schools and were raised in that milieu where the Holocaust was quite present in one way or another.
“There would be a moment for each of these students where they would question some of their assumptions, although not particularly in relation to Israel the way it is erupting right now—because it’s very intense today.”
In the past, Glowacka says Jewish students might have questioned assumptions about the centrality of the Holocaust, for example, in relation to other instances of genocide. Now, students are questioning their feelings about Israel, and the presence of the Holocaust in its national narrative. Over 10 years teaching this course, Glowacka has seen this continued quest to examine feelings and beliefs they’ve potentially grown up surrounded by, but the shift that’s happening today is an emotional discomfort with Israeli-state actions and messaging.
Glowacka has had many conversations with her Jewish students about that, “and I have to say these are very painful conversations for them—and for me as well. It’s hard to harness these emotions—in those conversations I do have to remind myself that I am a teacher,” and that students are drawn to her for guidance and support in these conversations even as she herself “experienced huge emotional and even epistemic turmoil at the moment, which is sometimes difficult to navigate.”
But despite—or perhaps because of—this difficulty, Glowacka says she’s been impressed by how thoughtful students are speaking to her and each other. “Coming from this place where they feel so emotionally wounded, to be wanting to put that kind of emotional and intellectual labour in rethinking these deeply ingrained ideas, I really appreciate the effort.”
