The Charlotte Jewish News- October 2026- Page 26
Queens Students Bring Interfaith Leadership Home
By Andy Harkavy
What happens when 10 college students from different faith traditions spend several days learning how to navigate religious differences? For a group from Queens University of Charlotte, the answer began this summer in Chicago.
Jewish, Muslim and Christian students traveled with Andy Harkavy, director of Hillel & Jewish Life, and Campus Chaplain Adrian Bird to participate in the Interfaith America Leadership Summit. The national gathering brought together students and educators to study religious pluralism and develop the skills required to lead across lines of difference.
The Queens delegation reflected the diversity of the university itself. Each student arrived with a distinct religious identity, personal history, and perspective, but all shared a desire to learn from one another with the objective being to contribute to a stronger campus community.
Through workshops, smallgroup discussions and other collaborative exercises, participants examined both the promise and the difficulty of building communities in which people of
The Queens delegation takes in the Chicago skyline during the Interfaith America Leadership Summit.. different faiths and worldviews feel they belong. They practiced listening through disagreement, approaching challenging conversations with curiosity and identifying common ground without minimizing genuine differences.
The Queens students’ involvement extends beyond the summit through Hillel International’ s Multifaith Cohort for Campus Faith Partners & Student Leaders. The program supports campus leaders engaged in bridge-building efforts, connecting them with experienced practitioners and peers from across the country.
For the Jewish students and non-Jewish allies involved in Jewish Life at Queens, the summit also offered an opportunity to represent Queens Hillel & Jewish Life within a larger national conversation. Jewish students connected with peers who shared aspects of their identity while learning alongside people whose religious traditions differed from their own. In that setting, Jewish identity was neither isolated nor diminished. It became one distinct and essential voice within a broader interfaith community.
The students returned to Charlotte with new relationships, practical skills and a clearer sense of their responsibility to the community they are helping shape at Queens. They also carried home an important lesson: Bridge building does not require people to erase what distinguishes them. It asks them to listen carefully with intention, speak honestly and remain present when conversations become difficult.
At a time when college campuses can feel increasingly divided, that lesson carries significant urgency. Constructive engagement often begins with something deceptively simple: sitting down with someone whose experiences or convictions differ from our own, listening to that person’ s story, exploring the potential for finding common ground and asking what might still be built together.
For Hillel & Jewish Life at Queens, this translates into creating a campus where Jewish students can bring their full identities into communal life while forming substantive relationships with people of other faiths and backgrounds. Difference need not become a source of division. When it is acknowledged, explored, and respected, it can become the beginning of connection.
The work did not end when the students left Chicago. It came home with them to Queens.
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