Remembering Oct. 7 and learning about Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East
Throughout fall quarter, there are different opportunities for the Stanford community to remember and reflect on the impacts of Oct. 7 and to learn more broadly about the region and its history.
Monday marks one year since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Over the past 12 months, violence has unfolded across the region. Many in the Stanford community have been deeply affected by these events, experiencing feelings of loss and uncertainty about the future.
In the past year, scholars, students, and staff have sought ways to help one another understand a conflict with deep historical roots and have organized events and discussions to address what is often described as one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.
This quarter – including the week ahead – there are further opportunities for the community to come together to reflect and learn more about the conflict and its ongoing impacts.
Reflection and collective remembrance
Starting Monday, the Office for Religious and Spiritual Life (ORSL) will provide “Holding Each Other Through A Difficult Week: Open Sanctuary Space,” offering community members a quiet space for prayer and reflection. Chaplains will be available for spiritual care and support.
ORSL will hold a moment of silence every day at 4 p.m. followed by tea and a space to be together in conversations. No RSVP is necessary, attend as needed. The sanctuary will be open:
Monday and Tuesday: 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Wednesday and Thursday: 1 to 5 p.m.
Hillel, which helps support Stanford’s Jewish community, will host a memorial ceremony on Oct. 7 in Meyer Green from noon to 1 p.m. that will feature candle lighting, prayer, and poetry recitals led by students, faculty, and staff. Therapists will facilitate sharing circles in Hebrew and English from 10 a.m. to noon. Hillel will also be holding space for reflection between 1 to 5 p.m.
From 6 to 7:30 p.m., a survivor of the Nova massacre will also speak about his experience on Oct. 7. The day will close with a walk from Hillel to Meyer Green for a memorial closing featuring prayer and song.
An exhibit of pictures by the Israeli photojournalist Zvi Koren taken on Oct. 7 and in its aftermath will be on view for members of the campus community in the Koret Pavilion from Oct. 8-14.
The Markaz Resource Center, which supports students who identify with or are interested in Muslim experiences, is organizing a series of support groups for students, staff, faculty, and other impacted people through their Muslim Mental Health Initiative. In addition, a clinician from Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) will be providing “Let's Talk In Community” sessions from noon to 12:30 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays every week starting Oct. 10.
Student organizations and groups are also holding remembrances on Oct. 7 and beyond.
These include a vigil in White Plaza from 6 to 9 p.m. organized by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
The Stanford Israel Association (SIA) will set up an installation of over a hundred chairs to represent hostages in Gaza that will be on display from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Oct. 7. SIA will also hold a vigil at Meyer Green at 7:30 p.m.
Educational and informative events
Throughout October and November, other events are happening across campus.
- On Oct. 6, Amichai Magen, a visiting fellow in Israel Studies at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) will deliver a webinar titled “One Year After the October 7th Massacre: Memory, Mourning, and Consequences.” In the event hosted by the Stanford Jewish Alumni Network (S-JAN), Magen will discuss the effect of Oct. 7 on Israel’s politics and society, Israeli response to the attacks, and his experiences as an Israeli scholar on the Stanford campus.
- On Oct. 9, Jonathan Judaken from Washington University will discuss his new book, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism (Columbia UP, 2024), as part of a four-part speaker series, “How to Think About Antisemitism,” that considers what hostility towards or prejudice against Jewish people means in today’s climate. The series, which is open to the public, is being organized by Ari Y. Kelman, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education with a courtesy appointment in religious studies, and is a companion to the course Kelman is currently teaching, JEWISHST 205: How to Think About Antisemitism. The series is sponsored by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies at the Graduate School of Education, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE).
- On Oct. 12, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies will host a lecture titled “In the Cities of Slaughter: Reading Bialik After October 7,” which will feature a discussion between Peter Cole, a MacArthur Fellow and visiting professor at Yale, Vered Shemtov, the faculty director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, and Steven J. Zipperstein, Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History. “In the Cities of Slaughter” is a poem written by Hayyim Nahman Bialik in 1904 about the 1903 Kishinev pogrom.
- On Oct. 15, Dr. Maha Nassar, an associate professor in modern Middle East history and Islamic studies at the University of Arizona, will deliver a talk titled “Steadfast on Campus: A Century of Global Palestinian Student Activism.” Nassar’s talk is being supported by several programming efforts including PATH+, a DLCL group led by Alexander Key, an associate professor of comparative literature, that aims to consider new directions for Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Hebrew languages, literatures, and cultures and is also part of the Middle Eastern Studies Forum’s “Arab Futures and Pasts” that focuses on contemporary and historical dynamics relevant to the Arab world. The Middle Eastern Studies Forum was launched in 2024 by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies to foster and support scholarly research, education, intellectual inquiry, and artistic engagement with the Middle East.
- On Oct. 29, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Department of History, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and SGS Oceanic Imaginaries will host the Yale historian Nurfadzilah Yahaya for a talk titled “Unsettlements: History of Land Reclamation in British Mandate of Palestine.”
- On Nov. 21, FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law will host Marc Lynch, a professor of political science at George Washington University and the director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, for a talk titled “America and the Middle East Warscape.” Lynch is the author of The Arab Uprisings and The New Arab Wars, and co-editor of Making Sense of the Arab State.
For more events, please check events.stanford.edu. In addition, further events are being planned and will be posted there.
Learning opportunities for current students
Matriculated students have access to various courses exploring the evolution of the conflict.
This quarter, Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and professor of Middle East history, emeritus, is teaching HISTORY 88: Palestine, Zionism, Israel: 150 Years of Conflict.
Beinin’s research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel and on U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Beinin will also deliver a lecture, titled “Understanding October 7, 2023, and Israel’s War on the Gaza Strip,” to students taking HISTORY 1: History of 2024, a course that provides a historical perspective on current events. The course will also feature a lecture by Amir Weiner, an associate professor of history, titled “Israel 2024: Domestic and External Challenges.”
Other courses that touch upon the Middle East can be viewed on ExploreCourses.