Information about Muslims and Islam in both its historical and current incarnations should be available in both academic and community settings to offset stereotyping and prejudice.

American Muslims find themselves routinely being asked to act as emissaries, explaining Islam and religiously informed geopolitics to non-Muslims; many also must explain Muslim practice in America's multicultural context to the wider Muslim world. To the extent that campuses can support these efforts they should do so.

Colleges should assert that stereotyping of all Muslims as terrorists or in any other way is not acceptable in public settings.

Colleges may want to engage both members of the local Muslim community and its own Muslim student body or staff in a project to create guidelines for responding to bigoted portrayals of Muslims and Islam.

Further academic and government research must be conducted to assess the impact of Islamophobia on campus and community life, with a special focus on the extent to which bias and bigotry is tolerated in mainstream media corporations, especially those using the public airwaves.

Challenge Systemic Antisemitism

Discussions of the history of antisemitism should be part of not only Jewish and Middle Eastern studies but part of an American Studies curriculum. The goal will be to enable students to recognize antisemitic metaphors and images whenever they appear.

Students who express antisemitic language or engage in antisemitic imagery should be assumed to be doing so unwittingly. Only after careful inquiry should college administrators, reporters and other stakeholders assert that such students subscribe to antisemitic ideology.

More research must be done to systematically distinguish between and among incidents that are clearly antisemitic (based in perceptions of race, religion and culture) and those that are primarily negative expressions of opinion about Israeli state policy and behavior, no matter how inflammatory. This will aid in helping formulate appropriate responses for different types of incidents.

Assess the Extent of Bias on Campus Comprehensively and Systematically

The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) should retain qualified social scientists to conduct a national survey of college students to determine the extent of bias incidents they experience based on the identities already used by the FBI for its crime studies. Another valuable aspect of this study would be assessing why students downplay their experience of such incidents.

Allow Students to Take Campus Coexistence into Their Own Hands

Student-led efforts to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia should be publicized and celebrated campus-wide. The value of such actions exceeds direct conflict resolution.

Student orientation guides and campus codes of conduct should include guidelines on how to respond to antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents, and any other bigotry. Such guidelines should go beyond simply asserting that such behavior is unacceptable.

Student interfaith/intercultural and social action projects (such as raising funds for Haitian earthquake relief or serving meals together at soup kitchens) that are not specifically designed to interrogate antisemitism, Islamophobia or any other form of bigotry should be encouraged and supported.

Protect the rights of students not to act as "representatives of their faith" or to be expected to take positions on complex geopolitical issues when they would prefer to remain outside those conversations.

Projects that bring students together across religious, racial, ethnic, gender, and other lines should be targeted for increased funding by government and non-government agencies, foundations, and donors.

The DOE and USCCR should jointly sponsor an annual award for bridging divides on campus.

Resist Fanning Conflicts Where the Middle East Is the Flashpoint

Events in the Middle East invariably act as flashpoints for antisemitic, anti-Zionist, Islamophobic and/or Arabophobia incidents. It is crucial that college administrators and professors anticipate such eventualities and not allow any one group, whether comprised of students, professors or outside speakers, to dominate the discussion.

Student groups, university administrators, staff, and faculty, should identify and be aware of speakers and organizations--on the Right and on the Left--that have a track history of inflammatory behavior and speech. If such speakers are welcomed to campus, particularly under the banner of free speech protections, campuses should anticipate conflict and plan for measured, evidence-based debate.

Jewish and Muslim fears must be taken seriously, not explained away as "over-reaction" to rhetoric or public display (e.g. anti-Zionist street theatre). Where necessary, campus administrators must take active steps to help students obtain a sense of personal and psychological safety.

Suggestions in the joint statement by Cary Nelson of the American Association of University Professors and Ken Stern of the American Jewish Committee should be taken seriously and seen as one constructive path toward illuminating complex issues regarding campus bias, confronting bigotry, and respecting the First Amendment and the tradition of open inquiry in the academy.

Combat Media Distortions

While it may be impossible to change or even challenge initially sloppy or sensational reporting of antisemitic of Islamophobic incidents on campus, deans and campus public relations professionals can insist that journalists report accurately on the response to incidents.

Campuses should send out their own press releases and add information about productive responses to conflict in university-run media, including college websites.

Improve U.S. Government Research with Well-Designed Studies

The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), which have both investigated prejudice and bigotry on campus, must invest in properly researched studies of Islamophobia.

Future recommendations by U.S. government agencies should not be generated on the basis of flawed and narrow information-gathering practices, as was the case with the USCCR's investigation into antisemitism on campus.

In its language and behaviors, the U.S. government must be vigilant to retain the distinction between political ideas and illegal actions.

Use Accurate Terminology

Retire the phrase "hate crimes" and replace it with the more useful and accurate "bias crimes" and "bias incidents" in both legal and scholarly work, since many incidents of bias do not rise to the level of crimes under our legal system. The emerging multi-disciplinary field of "Hate Studies" should consider recasting itself as "Bias Studies."

Political advocacy groups should reduce the use of terms such as "extremism" and "anti-Americanism" in public discourse and strive for more specific language and analysis in their public pronouncements.

The American Sociological Association or other appropriate scholarly organization should produce an accessible briefing booklet detailing contemporary research on people who join social movements engaged in protests and demonstrations. Such research must avoid demonizing students and others who become involved in social movements as a "lunatic fringe," dysfunctional "troublemakers," or simply ignorant.