Answer The Hate

Message templates

Asking for antisemitism training

For asking an employer, university, union or organisation to cover antisemitism in the training it already runs, written as a consistency ask rather than a request for special treatment.

  • An evening
  • Anti-antisemitism
  • workplace
  • campus
  • training
  • complaints

Most institutions that run equality and diversity training cover several forms of hatred and omit this one. Usually nobody decided to omit it. The course was built from a list somebody inherited, and the list has not been opened since.

That is why the strongest version of this ask is about consistency rather than about need. Ask to be included in the programme that already runs, on the same footing as everything else in it. A request for a separate session on antisemitism invites a decision about whether antisemitism warrants a session, which is an argument you may not win. A request for a line in a course that already exists invites a much smaller question, and one that is considerably harder to answer no to.

Attach something to the training. Training on its own is the standard institutional answer, because it produces a completed form and changes nothing else. Who delivers it, whether it is mandatory for the people whose decisions it affects, and what happens when somebody reports something afterwards, those are the parts that decide whether any of it counts.

One thing about your reader. The person who would have to arrange this is often already on your side, and short of the internal weight to raise it alone. A letter written as ammunition for them beats a letter that puts them on the defensive.

Assemble the three blocks below, and change the wording so it sounds like you.

Raising it formally with your institution covers routing, records, and what to do when the reply says they take it seriously.

Block one

Describe the situation

Use this as it stands, or change whatever doesn't sound like you.

Copy this

I am writing about the equality and diversity training we already provide. Having looked at what it covers, I cannot find antisemitism addressed anywhere in it, while other forms of racial and religious hostility are covered in some detail. I do not think anybody decided to leave it out, and I am not asking for anything to be removed, or for this to be treated as more serious than anything else we cover. I am asking for it to be included on the same footing as the rest, delivered to the same standard, and reviewed on the same cycle. If I have missed where it appears, I would be grateful to see the material, because two colleagues have now looked for it and reached the conclusion I did.

Block two

Say why you are speaking

Pick one. Being straightforward about fear or isolation is not a weakness here. It is often the most persuasive thing you can say.

  • I am raising it because something happened to me here, and I would rather the next person met somebody who had been trained than somebody working it out in the moment.
  • I am raising it because a member of my team brought me a complaint about this and I realised I did not know what our own process expected of me, which is not a position I want to be in twice.
  • I am raising it because our training covers every other form of hostility we have publicly committed to acting on, and I cannot find the reason this one sits outside it.
  • I am raising it because I am not Jewish, and it seems wrong that the people affected by something are the only people who ever ask for it to be covered.
  • I am raising it because this sits in my remit, I have wanted to add it for a while, and a written request from a colleague is what lets me put it on an agenda rather than on a list.
  • I am raising it in writing because whoever has to arrange this needs something they can point to, and a conversation in a corridor gives them nothing to work with.
  • I am raising it because we ask every new starter to complete this in their first week, and whatever it leaves out is what we are teaching them does not count.
  • I am raising it because I sat through the training and noticed the gap, and pretending I had not noticed felt worse than sending this.

Block three

Make your ask

Ordered from easiest to hardest. Choose what you can actually stand behind.

Ask what it coversEasiest
Please send me the list of what our current equality and diversity training covers, and the material itself if it can be shared. I am asking to see it rather than asking anybody to describe it from memory.
Include it in what already runsStraightforward
Please add antisemitism to the existing programme rather than building a separate session for it. A standalone session is the thing that quietly stops running after a year, and inclusion is what makes it ordinary.
Say who delivers it, and who choseBolder
Please tell me who will deliver this part, what their grounding in the subject is, and who makes that choice. I am not proposing anybody in particular, I am asking that somebody competent is chosen and that the choice is visible.
Make it mandatory for the people it affectsHard
Please make it mandatory for managers, for whoever handles complaints, and for anybody who decides what happens after a report, rather than optional for whoever is already interested. Optional training reaches the people who need it least.
Review it, and publish where a report goesHardest
Please set a date to review this twelve months on, and publish the route somebody uses to report an incident afterwards. Training with no reporting route attached teaches people to recognise something they then have nowhere to take.

Rules worth holding to

  1. Ask to be included, not to be excepted. Being added to what already exists is far harder to refuse than being given something of your own.
  2. Do not name a provider. The moment you do, the conversation stops being about the gap and starts being about that company and your reasons for naming it.
  3. Keep training and complaints apart. They are two different asks, and bundling them lets an institution answer the cheaper one and count it as both.
  4. Expect to be told it is already covered. Ask to see the material. That answer is usually sincere and often wrong, and the slides settle it either way.
  5. Write it so the person who has to arrange this can forward it upwards without editing a word of it.
  6. One ask per message. Send five and you will be answered on the easiest one, and the reply will read as a full response.
  7. Keep a copy, with the date, somewhere that is not your work account.