Shira Hoffer ’25

Shira Hoffer
Shira Hoffer '25
2024 Prize Winner

Abstract

In this submission, I reflect upon the effect that GENED 1166: Pluralism: Case Studies in American Diversity has had on my Harvard experience. As one of my first classes at Harvard, it welcomed me into an interreligious community, full of new friends and scholars interested in exploring religion in American life. It inspired my course of study, pushing me to create an independent study to explore similar themes, and it will inform my thesis on the intersection of religious liberty and anti-discrimination efforts in the US. From this Gen Ed, I found out about interfaith extracurricular opportunities, which led me to explore the world of civil disagreement. Most recently, in the wake of the Israel/Gaza war, my college experience, largely molded by having taken this Gen Ed, prepared me to establish a nonprofit promoting education and dialogue for peace. This Gen Ed has impacted every aspect of my college experience, and I could not be more grateful to have taken it.

Submission

Professor Diana Eck’s Gen Ed course, “Pluralism: Case Studies in American Diversity,” fundamentally impacted my Harvard social, academic, and extracurricular experiences. Coming from a pluralistic Jewish high school, I was familiar with intrareligious pluralism, but never had peers of different faiths before. In this class, I forged friendships, and even attended the prayer services of, peers from different religious backgrounds. While I might have met these people outside of this class, I would not have understood their practices, nor been comfortable asking to observe them, without the community Professor Eck built in this Gen Ed class.

Academically, this course brilliantly utilized case studies to explore the diversity of religious practices in America, and to make the needs of these communities feel tangible and relevant. Cases ranged from the battle for a muezzin in a Michigan city, to the frustration of Native American communities as rock-climbers ascended their sacred rock formation. I relished digging into a new case each week, learning about new traditions and historical (and present!) attempts to accommodate them in American society. This course inspired me to build an independent study, “Exemptions and Accommodations for Religion in America,” modeled after cases in this Gen Ed which illustrated tensions between secularity and religion in America. As I plan my thesis in Social Studies and Religion — with Professor Eck as my Religion advisor — I find myself returning to the themes of particularism versus universalism, and the limits of the First Amendment, that I first explored in this class.

Regarding extracurriculars, Gen Ed introduced me to the Interfaith Forum at Harvard, which further fostered my interest in civil discourse and dialogue across differences. In turn, I joined the Intellectual Vitality Committee, and the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Program at the Safra Center, before training at the law school’s Harvard Mediation Program, and mediating monthly in small claims courts across Massachusetts. I use many of the skills taught in this Gen Ed, such as active listening, open-minded questioning, and more, in these three extra-curriculars, and find myself drawing on examples from the case studies to inform how I handle real-life scenarios of disagreement.

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack on Israel, and given how steeped I was in the world of dialogue and religious literacy, I felt like I needed to do something productive to bridge gaps during this tumultuous time. Luckily, my college journey — as largely catalyzed by this Gen Ed — prepared and inspired me to establish a nonprofit organization in the wake of the Israel/Gaza war: The Hotline for Israel/Palestine. HIP is a texting hotline promoting education for peace. Our mission is to teach people how to educate themselves by answering questions with resources from many perspectives, and helping people develop their own informed and nuanced positions. Over the past seven weeks, I have recruited over 40 volunteers from different religious, political, and national backgrounds, and together, we have already answered over 250 questions. I have developed a training based on my experiences in the aforementioned extracurriculars, which includes dialogue skills, tools to promote open inquiry, and a framework for answering questions in a multipartisan way. Recently, we have also established a newsletter covering a new topic each week in accordance with our pedagogical model, and listed FAQs on the website.

This month, Professor Eck kindly invited me over for tea to discuss the Hotline for Israel/Palestine, and we related it back to two notable case studies from the Gen Ed course. One demonstrated the divisive effect that Israel/Palestine can have on interfaith work, and the other showed how, nonetheless, bridge building is possible. Sitting in Professor Eck’s living room, I felt like, two years later, I had come full circle.