Shira Fishman ’94

“Something fundamental has shifted in how we discuss terrorism, creating new complexities I didn’t anticipate during my early research.”

I live in a very Jewish suburb of Boston. Massachusetts tends to be very liberal, so we have both progressive voices on the left and, in my particular community, a strong Jewish identity and a lot of support for Israel — an interesting intersection.

Many Jewish homes in my neighborhood have put up signs supporting the hostages or Israel. At the same time, we’ve experienced antisemitism. There have been incidents targeting young people, and a friend had a brick thrown through their front door. Both things are happening at once.

While my family hasn’t personally experienced this, I’ve seen it professionally. I’m a professor at William James College, a small graduate school for psychology. My areas of expertise are motivation and the psychology of terrorism. The school is very liberal, accepting, and inclusive. But after October 7, Jewish faculty realized that inclusivity didn’t seem to extend to us. This came less from administration — though there was the typical silence after October 7 — than from peer-to-peer interactions among students and faculty.

There’s often an unspoken assumption that Jews aren’t part of diversity initiatives or don’t need representation. I’ve worked at William James for about 10 years. Early on, there was a Jewish faculty group. A mentor asked me to join, so I did, but it didn’t feel particularly necessary. I remember wondering, “Why do we need this?” After October 7, it became clear how much we needed that space — for support, for sharing experiences. We restarted the group and now meet regularly, working to shift attitudes and improve the representation of Jewish voices at the school.

One development I hadn’t expected was that students now see Jewish faculty as a resource. I regularly have students coming to me, saying, “This happened in class, how do I handle it?” or “What do you think about this?” This year, during faculty interviews with incoming students, several said, “I looked up your bio, and I want to ask you about being Jewish at the school.” That’s never happened to me before.

It has become more complicated for Jews in America to be loud about their Jewish identity because of the fear of antisemitism. I see that with students who feel like, “I have to sit in class with this person, so I don’t want to get in their face or make a big deal about this.” That feels harder than it used to. But I’ve also seen a strengthening of the Jewish community. Faculty have been loud about their Jewish identity in ways that we were not in the past, such as being explicit about a Jewish holiday in our away messages on email. To some extent, students feel more scared and have a harder time than the faculty in their daily interactions. 

My hope is that by being a support for Jewish students and showing them that there are people who hear them and get them, students will feel more comfortable in their Jewish identities. They can see other people feeling proud of that identity, and that is how we can create safe and supportive spaces for the Jewish community in these times.

Studying the Psychology of Terrorism, and Fundamental Shifts in How We Discuss It 

When I was a grad student at the University of Maryland, I was invited to join a research center funded by the Department of Homeland Security. This was post-9/11, when Al-Qaeda was very active, and we were trying to understand what psychological factors could motivate someone to join and give their life to a terrorist organization.

We needed to move beyond simplistic explanations. At the time, there was this assumption that “we’re not them, we could never be terrorists.” People sought root causes, thinking “they’re poor” or “they’re uneducated.” But there are lots of people who don’t have money and don’t become terrorists. While these factors might contribute, they are not — in psychological terms — necessary and sufficient. So we asked: What are the key contributing factors here?

We found several critical motivational patterns. First, there’s the powerful influence of social context. If terrorist groups control where you live, they have power, money, and resources. Another key factor is the need to do something of significance. We all have a need for meaning and purpose in our lives, but imagine growing up with little hope of prosperity or achievement. 

In the context of the current war and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are specific elements that play a key role. Even back when I started studying terrorism, we talked about occupation, for example, as a contributing factor. If you’re regularly made to stand in line, cross a border, go through security checks — all that contributes to your sense that you have no power, no other choice. This is key, when you look at terrorism not as a syndrome, but as a tool of warfare, often used by groups with little power or low status who see it as their only option. 

But understanding these structural pressures still leaves the question of individual choice — why do some people in similar circumstances turn to violence while others don’t? If the path toward terrorism stems from a desire to do something of significance with one’s life, then in theory, you’d need to provide another path to significance. Can you take someone who’s becoming radicalized and give them another way to make a difference in their own lives or the lives of people around them that doesn’t rely on extremism or violence? There have been groups in the past that have given up violence — for example, in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and in Ireland — but how the learnings from these specific groups translate to the current global jihad movement has yet to be explored. 

When I lecture students on this topic, I’m cautious about what I say in a way that never used to cross my mind. Something fundamental has shifted in how we discuss terrorism, creating new complexities I didn’t anticipate during my early research. I don’t remember another time when there was such an open debate about whether a terrorist organization is justified in using terrorism. Maybe this comes, in part, from the fact that we see branches of government engaging in terrorism, not just organizations. But there seems to be a real shift from the idea that violence against innocent civilians is never acceptable, toward viewing it as a legitimate tool — as long as you’re doing it to end oppression. Now there’s a mainstream narrative that says these people are victims who were given no choice, and therefore it’s not terrorism, but justified resistance. That feels really different, and it’s coming from the media and the language we use. In the past, there was broad agreement that Al Qaeda, for example, was a terrorist group. Now, mainstream media like The New York Times or Boston Globe do not call Hamas a terrorist group. Instead, they use terms like fighters, militants, or gunmen.

Why We Struggle with Ambiguity  

We gravitate toward black and white explanations: there’s an oppressor and an oppressed, an indigenous people and a colonizer. If it’s more complex or nuanced, we’re not really interested. Often students just want an answer. “Don’t bring me to class to make me debate somebody. Just tell me what I need to know and I’ll take notes.” Is this generational? Is this TikTok? Do I get all my answers on social media, so I don’t have the attention span to engage in nuanced debate? Perhaps. But also, it’s just really comfortable to see the world as black and white. We have to, to some extent, because walking around seeing everything as gray would be very uncomfortable. So we ask, how comfortable are we in the gray? Where do we draw our line? The answer differs for different people, and we can measure it.

We’ve done research on something called the need for closure—our ability to tolerate ambiguity and not knowing. We exist on a spectrum from needing constant answers to being comfortable with ambiguity. But other variables are important as well. Environmental factors can force us to want closure: time pressure, social expectations, or our assumption that we should know where we stand. That can push people into needing to make a decision, thinking, “I need to know where I stand on this, so I’m going to pick a side.” Once we’ve picked a side, it’s really hard to change our minds; we’ll find every reason why our choice was right and the other option was flawed. It’s a psychological mechanism that helps us feel good about our decisions so we can move on. It helps us function. 

The problem with nuance is that it often requires us to sit with discomfort, even when we want closure. While some tolerate it more than others, we can’t endlessly tolerate ambiguity. It’s just too hard.