Following All-School Meeting (ASM) on November 6, Head of School Dr. Raynard Kington sent out an email to students, parents, and alumni acknowledging the impact of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict on Andover’s campus. He reiterated Andover’s policy about making school-wide statements.
Aside from Kington speaking about the topic during previous ASMs, the email was his first official, written acknowledgement of the conflict. In an interview with The Phillipian, Kington explained his rationale behind the email.
“We know that there’s ongoing discussion in all of education, and actually beyond education, the whole society, about sort of how institutions are responding to this crisis in the Middle East. And we thought that given sort of just how this conversation was evolving in the world at large, that we sort of speak to our community. It was targeted primarily to students and faculty, our internal community, and to reiterate our positions on any identity-based bigotry or bias or violence, whether it’s islamophobia or anti-semitism or racism of any form,” said Kington.
The policy, which was detailed in the email, determines whether the administration is to release a statement about a national or global crisis. According to a magazine article about the policy written by Tracy Sweet, Chief Communications Officer, the school will only release a statement if it can meaningfully act upon the issue in question or if the issue directly affects Andover’s educational mission. In the interview, Kington reiterated the need for a statement-issuing policy.
“The easiest thing to do is to say yes. But then you just are constantly issuing statements. And it sort of almost devalues it, constantly saying yes. And then you begin to ask, ‘Oh, is this tragedy a bigger tragedy than this tragedy?’ You’re making these ethical judgments in ways that are just problematic, and unending if there’s basically no framework for thinking about it before you do it,” said Kington.
Signing off the email alongside Kington was President of the Board of Trustees Amy Falls ’82, P’19, P’21. Falls expanded on the reasoning behind a policy for issuing a statement.
“I worry that sometimes our theory of change and impact is so focused on statements where we really need to focus on what we can do rather than you know what we say. So I am supportive of the idea that Andover making a statement that’s not really adding to the dialogue or doing anything” said Falls.
Falls continued, “We should decide, not based on the magnitude of the tragedy, but whether we have something important to contribute to the dialogue,” said Falls.
As for educational programming regarding the Israel-Hamas War, Kington emphasized that these opportunities would be available to the community soon, though they are still a work in progress. Kington first introduced the idea of educational programming at an ASM three weeks ago.
“I think [the educational programming will] be in the next several weeks is my understanding. But I think the final date hasn’t been shown. As soon as possible, we do that. And then we think about programming. I was just having exchanges with an alum, who was deeply involved in a number of institutional approaches and was offering to help connect to a number of other resources. So they’re lots of things that are happening,” said Kington.
Some students felt disappointed about the email sent. Ella Kowal ’25, a Jewish member of the community, expressed her overall dissatisfaction with the administration’s lack of accountability for not issuing a statement earlier.
“In my opinion, it is better than nothing. Addressing it, addressing that there will be action… That does mean something to me. While it does feel a little bit ingenuine, I don’t know if there’s any way that, at this point in the process, it couldn’t have sounded ingenuine,” said Kowal.
Kowal continued, “But, at the same time, I think part of that statement should have included an apology. I hope that the HOS [Head of School] office would realize how not making a statement impacted students and recognize that they were wrong in this process. I think that’s a really important thing as an administration, is to recognize when you make mistakes, and work to acknowledge them, and it felt like [the email] was just a scramble to hide their mistakes”
Nisa Khairunnisa ’25, a member of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), also felt underwhelmed by the email.
“I personally think that they can’t exactly take a very strong stance against a conflict or against an event, because in the end, [the email] is supposed to facilitate different modes of thoughts, different opinions. But at the same time, this [message] is very general… Overall, I just feel like it’s a bit fake,” said Khairunnisa.
At the same time, other students felt satisfied with the email. Leena Rustum ’25 believed that while the Head of School faces limitations when addressing the Andover community, Kington still prioritized the well-being of the community.
“I was overall pretty happy with this statement because I know it’s hard to talk about but he kept it really supportive which I think a Head of School needs to do. He didn’t try to do anything other than support the community and the Andover community, and I respect that there are also guidelines about what he can and can’t talk about,” said Rustum.
Student discourse about the Israel-Hamas War, which was one of the motivating factors behind the release of the email, has recently increased. Kington expressed his appreciation for the open conversations that have been occurring on campus.
“I was very proud of the extent to which students were engaging thoughtfully with different approaches to this… I really appreciated that students were actually trying to talk among themselves, and to learn with this baseline of mutual respect, which was commendable because that wasn’t happening in lots of places in the world,” said Kington.
Kington continued, “We are a global institution, more so than your average institution in America, where we have people connected to all elements of this. It’s entirely understandable that so many of us, and so many students, are stunned about what’s happening and what happened before it, just the whole thing. What I hope that the institution is doing is modeling at least one approach to dealing with these types of issues, and that is sort of trying to be thoughtful and focus on understanding and individuals developing their own opinions and the rationale.”
