“For the past few years,” stated Republican Congressional representative Tim Walberg, on May 7, 2025, “our Committee has played a critical role in both uncovering the rampant antisemitism on college campuses and holding administrators accountable.” Walberg was speaking as the chairman of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, during a hearing called “Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses.” Nowhere in the hearing was there any person deposed named “Miss Haverford”; and yet, that is one of the not-quite-accurate namings of Dr. Wendy Raymond, president of Haverford College, during the course of the hearing. Dr. Raymond was the only woman being questioned, and it was easy to notice that she was asked more questions than other presidents called to testify. She was also the only president who refused to divulge information about numbers of or discipline processes for students and faculty involved in protesting violence against Palestinians.

The assembled representatives mocked President Raymond and Haverford College for allowing children (by which they meant college-age legally adult students) to govern themselves. They do so according to an honor code, the preamble to which reads,

As Haverford students, we seek an environment in which members of a diverse community can live together, interact, and learn from one another in ways that protect both personal freedom and community standards. For our diverse community to prosper, we must embrace our differences and be mindful of our varied perspectives and backgrounds; this goal is only possible if students seek mutual understanding by means of respectful communication. The Honor Code holds us accountable for our words and actions, and guides us in resolving conflicts by engaging each other in dialogue.

At one point Representative Owens declared—about Haverford’s student-run honor code—“I would suggest that you put somebody in charge that are adults all right because obviously this is from folks who’ve been trained how to hate.”

It looked to me, from my vantage point as a Haverford professor watching from home, like the gathered representatives did not understand (whether willfully or not) Haverford’s culture nor its disciplinary process. That’s likely because Haverford College seeks to take a restorative approach to conflict rather than a retributive one. Retribution is punishment; restoration is repair.

Perhaps the lack of understanding is itself understandable: political and legal processes in the US are fairly steeped in retributive logics—we like to punish. It was clear that many of the congresspersons involved wanted to see evidence of good hard punishment for students and professors engaged in protest on campus. Why? I think it’s due to a larger set of assumptions that underlie attitudes toward conflict in the US. We find it hard to conceive of justice without retribution. And lately many seem to think disagreement itself is a form of injustice.

So, what is the difference between punishment and repair? What was so unique about Haverford’s culture that it was worth mocking in a Congressional hearing? And, really, why pick on a tiny liberal arts college with only 1,400 students, who probably chose to go there because they want to learn how to self-govern in a community that aspires to mutual respect?

Haverford College is located just outside of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania. It was originally founded by Quakers, its faculty still govern themselves according to modified Quaker consensus principles, and the student body governs itself with an honor code that is discussed, revised, and ratified yearly by the student body. The honor code covers academic and social guidelines for student conduct on campus. Haverford, as an institution, also has a history of commitment to social justice and greater learning. Many of its faculty live on campus, as do the great majority of its students. It is a unique and special place.

That does not mean that it is a place without conflict. No such place exists. Indeed, conflict is an important part of human interaction: it helps us figure out who we are, what we stand for, and what we stand against. If you find a place where there is no conflict, it is likely that what makes that so is domination, not widespread agreement. So, yes, conflict is inevitable. But it also ought to matter to us, because when we engage in it, it gives us an opportunity to test our commitments, potentially learn from others, and determine what we will do with conflict. Hence the thinly veiled disagreement at the hearing about how we should resolve conflicts: do we seek to understand what the problem truly is, and remedy it, or do we merely impose punishment?

Let’s think about the two approaches. Retribution looks to a past moment when a rule was broken. It then applies the rule, seeks evidence of infraction, and metes out punishment. That can be a just response. Most of us probably agree that when someone knowingly breaks a rule and causes harm to another person or the larger community, that harm should be remedied.

But there’s the catch. What is a remedy?

Consider the punishments employed by retributive justice: exile (or expulsion), fines, imprisonment. It is important to ask: once such punishment has been dealt out, what has changed? Will the one who committed the harm have an understanding of why the harm was wrong? Will that same one be involved in making sure the harm is repaired? Will anyone repair the harm, or even address what happened? Who will make sure similar harm does not happen again? Or is punishment the only objective?

Perhaps an example would help. In a majority white community, a Black family that is new to a neighborhood awakens to find racist graffiti painted on their newly purchased home. That is property damage, yes, but it also threatens the sense of safety and welcome the family would seek to feel in their new residence. What would repair this harm? If we find the person or persons who vandalized the house, grant them due process, and put them in jail or fine them, what changes? Sure, that’s a consequence for bad action. But have those who vandalized learned anything about why what they did was wrong? Have they been faced with the specificity of the real harm their actions caused for other human beings? Has the damage to property been fixed? By whom? Have other members of the community begun to realize that they may have a larger problem than just one incidence of graffiti? Have the new residents of the neighborhood gotten closer to feeling safe or welcome where they live? What would repair the multiple sites of brokenness here?

So, one danger of retribution is that it rests satisfied with punishing wrongdoers and is less concerned with repairing what was damaged or offering aid to those who were harmed. To risk being dramatic: what is at stake here is the world itself. We all build the worlds we live in by inhabiting them alongside others in the ways that we do. We make choices daily that have repercussions on the lives of others whether we know it or not, from the smallest decision to be kind or rude to the larger impact of addressing or ignoring unjust practices.

That might seem like a heavy load but perhaps it helps to remember that this responsibility is an important part of our freedom: if we want to live in worlds we build, we have to take responsibility for building them. And if that is the backdrop, then I think it follows that in many settings, punishment accomplishes very little. It tells everyone involved: you—person who either made a mistake or believed something different from community norms—you deserve to be exiled from human community for what you did. But is that the only just response available? And is it effective? Does it build the world you would most want to live in?

A restorative approach says no to all of those questions. While retribution only looks backward, to past bad action, restorative practices address what happened in the past by looking at a broader span of time. What, in the past or present, caused what happened to happen? What would have prevented it? What do victims of harm need right now, and going forward? What does the community need to do, or to change, or to repair, not only for those victimized but for the community itself? Are there things that should be done for those accused of harm—do they have needs too? What would make the community a place where no one would think to turn to such actions or words? How can we create a future where this problem does not repeat itself?

Haverford College seeks to take a restorative approach to conflict rather than a retributive one. Retribution is punishment; restoration is repair.

It seems to me that if we don’t entertain all of those questions, and that larger span of time, we have not really attempted to repair the harm—what caused it, what it caused—and so we have done nothing to truly address it, nor to make the future less likely to repeat it. Punishment or expulsion may temporarily make the person who has caused the harm suffer or disappear, but the harm itself is still present. As such, retributive response may miss what it means to take responsibility for being in community with others. That is a capacity each of us has whether or not the state recognizes it in us, and thus it is important that we exercise that capacity as self-determining human beings, so we don’t let the skill atrophy. Retributive logic helps you understand why you should follow rules; restorative process helps each of us practice the difficult work of being free and responsible. Both may play an important role in how we manage the realities of human conflict and harm.

Embracing restorative process is important in this current moment, I would argue, when there are so many threats to democracy and democratic procedure. Why not champion processes that create constituents who actively participate in learning to understand one another, take responsibility for their mistakes and misunderstandings, and rebuild after damage?

In her Congressional testimony, Dr. Raymond was absolutely clear that antisemitism is not tolerated on the Haverford campus, and that it is always regrettable when hate is allowed to flourish in a space where education is the purpose. (It is always regrettable when hate is allowed to flourish.) She also did her best to protect freedom of speech, the right of peaceful assembly, and academic freedom. And, while no one could watch the hours of testimony and rate her performance at 100 percent, this balance was an important one to strike. She stumbled in parts of her testimony, and she repeated herself, and I’ve had a number of academic colleagues from other colleges tell me that they thought she did a terrible job in her testimony. I have my own history of disagreements with Dr. Raymond—conflict is inevitable—but it has surprised me how few people seem to have noticed that she succeeded in standing up for important democratic principles—far more than the other college presidents being questioned—and that she did that in a setting rigged for failure.

If the congresspersons at the hearing were worried about antisemitism, then I understand why these hearings would matter to them, because antisemitism is a serious harm. Let me be clear: antisemitism is an age-old form of hatred of others that needs to be rooted out and addressed wherever and whenever it attempts to reassert itself. What is true of antisemitism—its absolute wrongness, and our need to combat it—is also true of Islamophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, and many other forms of historic harm that also target people for the bare fact of what they are rather than anything they have done. Many of the congresspersons who posed questions at the hearing do not seem at all concerned about these other harms, given their legislative agendas. That is difficult for me to understand.

The reported cause for the selection of Haverford for these hearings is reports that Jewish students have felt unsafe there and should not have their education and well-being treated so carelessly. I take that seriously. I know Haverford College to be a place that takes that seriously. I also know there have been well-publicized criticisms of some of the college’s actions. It is all part of the story about conflict on the Haverford campus.

It’s also true that a wide-ranging group of Jewish faculty authored a joint letter emphasizing the respect they have felt from one another and from colleagues during these difficult times. There are also Jewish student groups whose view of the campus vastly differs from what the hearing reported. The Jewish community, on campus and elsewhere, is not homogenous; different groups think different things. A restorative approach emphasizes that it is important that we have these conversations, listen to one another, and figure out what to do, so that everyone is valued.

It also expects that human conflict is inevitable and important: if we’re going to live together, we’re going to have to figure out how to listen, reconcile, agree to disagree, or otherwise manage difference. We may not be able to forego retribution altogether. But restorative approaches do a better job of teaching us how to face human conflict.

I am not an idealist. I know that sometimes punishment may be necessary, and sometimes it may be impossible to bring people together. Even then, restorative response should be part of the process, since it matters not only who committed the harm, but what the harm is and how it should be repaired for those who suffered it. Hearing from all parties in a setting aimed at repair may reveal sites of harm that are more complex than what an initial turn to punishment would uncover. And that revelation may help all involved build a world more attuned to the values and needs—shared and unshared—of everyone.

A culture steeped in punishment tends to look at restorative approaches as weak. But anyone who has had to sit in a room face-to-face with someone they’ve wronged and listen carefully to what their actions caused will probably tell you that it’s not the easier road to take. Some might even call it a punishment. I prefer to think of it as an opportunity for all of us to have the courage to look at each person as deserving respect and mercy in equal parts.

When we do that, things get messier than categories allow, and it’s harder to draw lines past which “hate” is the primary response. Each of us has that power.