Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan recently returned from the West Coast where she participated in a three-day summit against antisemitism.
The 2024 Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism – hosted by the City of Beverly Hills, California, and chaired by its Mayor, Lester Friedman, in partnership with the Combat Antisemitism Movement – brought together municipal leaders from over 200 cities throughout North America and Canada.
Sheehan was a panelist in a discussion on addressing antisemitism across all levels of education, from elementary schools to universities.
Speaking with WAMC, Sheehan stressed the importance of teaching about the Holocaust and Jewish American heritage. The three-term Democrat said establishing safe environments at schools where every student feels protected is paramount.
"There were examples of universities that sent their Jewish students home, telling them that they couldn't keep them safe," said Sheehan. "And I think that when you think about that, if somebody sent a letter to all of the female students on campus and said, 'We can't keep you safe, you need to go home,' or the black students and said 'you need to go home because we can't keep you safe,' that would be completely unacceptable. And so I think just having an awareness of the fact that antisemitism often leads to other forms of discrimination, but in any event, it has no place on any education campus, whether that be K through 12 or a college campus."
Sheehan says Albany, like many other communities, has seen an increase in antisemitic incidents.
In December 2023, a man fired a shotgun outside of Albany's Temple Israel.
Sheehan says the mayors she spoke with agree that programs fostering dialogue and cooperation among diverse religious and ethnic groups must be supported.
"We need to ensure that we're promoting the exchanges and the communication and fostering that sense of community that is necessary to ensure that those of our Jewish residents who live here in the city of Albany feel safe and feel protected, and so that is critically important," Sheehan said. "It was one of the takeaways from this summit that we need to continue to engage in dialog."
Sheehan says she understands that some residents have strong feelings about what's happening in the Middle East, as Israel continues its war against Hamas in Gaza. According to officials, more than 45,000 Palestinians have now been killed by the Israeli military.
"It's important that we continue to foster civil conversations and discourse over those very difficult issues, and we have to ensure that we are not allowing antisemitism to enter into those conversations and result in an attack on all Jewish people," said Sheehan. "I think about what is happening with Russia and Ukraine, and we do not see people defacing Russian flags or attacking people because of their Russian heritage, even though Russia has illegally invaded, you know, committed horrific war crimes in Ukraine. And yet, we see Jewish people being attacked for what is happening in Israel, and it's just unacceptable."
Sheehan did not sign a resolution passed by the Albany Common Council in January calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
She says while the situation in Israel and Gaza is troubling, history cannot be denied, whether it's the Holocaust or the attacks by Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7th.
She says the summit focused on unity and understanding. "There were a number of African American mayors who attended this summit, and we talked about the intersectionality of discrimination, whether that be the Black community, the LGBTQ community, the Latino community, and really working to ensure that we were having that dialog about antisemitism often being the first, and then, the impact of discrimination on other groups that follows. And so it was really important for us to have that dialog and to listen to one another and to hear that this is something that we know impacts many different groups and ethnicities," Sheehan said.
