courage essay for students

Courage for Students

• Intentionality
• A “Noble” Goal

A high school student is trying to decide whether to represent her school in a math competition. She’s worried about embarrassing herself if she is not able to solve a problem. She’s afraid of disappointing others. After much thought, she decides to take the risk and to support her school.

After the teacher calls for volunteers to share how they solved the equation, an extremely shy student pauses, deliberates, and then decides to raise his hand. Although he almost never speaks at school, he wants to face his almost paralyzing fear of public speaking.

When a kindergartener hears his peer yelling, “You can’t play with us” to a smaller boy at recess, he immediately intervenes and invites the boy to join his game.

Why is it important?

Courage enhances student well-being..

• Adolescents higher in courage report greater satisfaction with their lives. And later in life, greater courage is related to a greater sense of purpose and life satisfaction.

Courage helps students to navigate social and emotional challenges.

• Greater courage in adolescents is related to the use of more self-directed coping . Thus, in schools the practice of courage could help students better adapt to difficult situations and attain their personal and academic goals.

Courage prepares students to take academic risks.

• Rather than avoid an assignment, students who engage in “academic courage” learn to persevere through a difficult learning task despite their fear, leading to more positive academic outcomes.

Courage emboldens students to speak up in the face of injustice.

• Safe and supportive learning environments can be more conducive to courage, and when students learn to advocate for others, they contribute to creating a more welcoming environment themselves.

Art on Purpose

Courage Blooms

Courage Challenge

Courage Creatures

Identifying Acts of Courage

Courageous and Compassionate Citizens

Developing the Courage to Speak Up

The Bystander’s Dilemma: What Does Courage Look Like?

Inspiring Students to Help

Literacy Book Bags to Encourage Courage

Reflecting on Moral Dilemmas with Practical Wisdom

Truth in Journalism and Dorothy Thompson

Learning from Courageous Forgivers 

Compass Points

Crumpled Reminder

It's Up to Us to Stick Our Necks Out

Who Are Your Heroes?

From Sympathy to Action

GGIE Online Courses for Educators

Do you want to dive deeper into the science behind our GGIE practices? Enroll in one of our online courses for educators!

You Might Also Like

Courage in Education

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Emotions & Feelings — Courage

Courage Essays

Prompt examples for courage essays, defining courage.

Define courage in your own words. What does it mean to be courageous? Explore the different facets of courage, from physical bravery to moral and emotional courage. Provide examples to illustrate your definition.

Personal Courage

Share a personal experience that required you to demonstrate courage. Describe the situation, the challenges you faced, and the reasons behind your courageous actions. Reflect on what you learned from that experience.

Courage in Literature

Select a literary work that prominently features the theme of courage. Discuss how courage is portrayed in the story, the characters who exhibit courage, and the impact of their courageous acts on the plot and themes.

Historical Examples of Courage

Examine a historical figure or event that exemplifies courage. Provide details about the person's actions or the event's circumstances, and analyze why these examples are often celebrated as acts of great courage.

The Psychology of Courage

Explore the psychological aspects of courage. Discuss what motivates individuals to overcome fear and take courageous actions. Consider the role of fear, resilience, and determination in acts of courage.

Moral Courage

Discuss the concept of moral courage. How does one exhibit courage when facing ethical dilemmas or standing up for one's beliefs? Share examples of individuals who displayed moral courage in the face of adversity.

Courage in the Face of Fear

Examine instances where individuals acted courageously despite experiencing fear. Discuss the relationship between fear and courage and how overcoming fear can lead to acts of bravery.

Everyday Acts of Courage

Highlight the importance of everyday acts of courage. Discuss how small acts of courage in daily life can make a significant impact, whether in relationships, personal growth, or social change.

Courage and Resilience

Explore the connection between courage and resilience. How does courage contribute to an individual's ability to bounce back from adversity or overcome challenges? Provide examples of resilience through courageous actions.

Courageous Leaders

Examine the role of courage in leadership. Discuss leaders who have demonstrated courage in their decisions and actions, and evaluate the impact of their leadership on society, organizations, or movements.

Words to Describe Anne Frank

The impact of oprah winfrey: media, philanthropy, and social change, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Courageous Legacy of Nelson Mandela

Understanding the importance of courage in life, the theme of courage in to kill a mocking bird, a novel by harper lee, courage as the most important law of life, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Courage and Bravery in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

The connection between courage and justice based on aristotle's literature, the views on bravery as highlighted in the things they carried, the dynamic nature of heroism in today's society, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

The Courageous Character of Cyrano in Cyrano De Bergerac, a Play by Edmond Rostand

Bravery in the red badge of courage and in my life, the thematic idea of courage in the serpent king by jeff zentner, amelia earhart – a hero in american history, amelia earhart and her courage to break gender stereotypes, amelia earhart: facing the paper tigers, the theories of amelia earhart’s disappearance, understanding the meaning of courage and its importance, human traits in beowulf, examining profiles of political courage in american government, profiles in lee's 'to kill a mockingbird' as examples of courage, standing up for what is right, political courage: navigating principles in governance, courageous quotes in beowulf, analysis of courage in chains, how does atticus show courage.

Courage (also called bravery or valor) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation.

Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, even death, or threat of death; while moral courage is the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, or personal loss.

Relevant topics

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

5 Inspiring Essays on Courage

Courage is a value held in high regard. There are countless quotes and explanations of what “courage” is. Some believe it’s the same as being fearless, while others say that courage is doing the right thing even if you’re afraid. Brene Brown says that “You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you can’t choose both.” Courage is about stepping outside of what’s familiar and comfortable. Here are five essays exploring what courage looks like:

“The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage” (2017) – Susan David

While technically not an essay, the transcript from this 2017 TEDTalk (and the speech itself) is a powerful exploration of emotional courage. Dr. Susan David, who lost her father when she was 15, describes how she dealt with grief. Societies often encourage people to suppress these types of emotions. She talks about a “radical acceptance” of every emotion, even the hard ones, and how this acceptance is necessary for true happiness. This acceptance isn’t easy. It takes courage. She has an especially poignant way of describing courage: she calls it “fear walking.”

Dr. Susan David is a world-leading management thinker and Harvard Medical School psychologist. She’s also an author and contributor to publications like The Harvard Business Review, New York Times, and more. David lectures around the world for clients like the United Nations, Google, and the World Economic Forum.

“Profile in Courage” (2004) – Dana Calvo

The photo of a single protester facing off a line of tanks is one of history’s most iconic images. In this essay from Smithsonian Magazine, readers learn the story behind it. In 1989, students from over three dozen universities gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest government corruption, joblessness, and attacks on free speech. The government declared martial law, sending tens of thousands of troops to the area. Violence erupted. Several hundred protesters were killed, thousands wounded. The story of the photograph, taken by 33-year old Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, is a story of courage.

Dana Calvo is a former national and foreign journalist. She now works in television.

“This Is A Crisis of Civil-Military Relations” (2020) – Eliot A. Cohen

In this piece, author Eliot Cohen examines what’s going on with military leadership in the age of the Trump administration. While these people are willing to “take a bullet” for America and take on responsibility for the “gravest decisions anyone can make,” they must now show a different kind of courage. Under President Trump’s leadership, the military brass must stand up and risk getting fired. While this essay describes a specific situation between two incredibly powerful branches of American society, it taps into the essence of courage. Courage comes with risks. It often requires people to risk something they didn’t anticipate losing.

Eliot A. Cohen is the dean of The John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He served as the Counselor of the Department of State from 2007-2009. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, he’s also the author of The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force.

“How To Find and Practice Courage” (2020) – Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

This essay opens with a story of a CEO who went against shareholder advice to do what he believed was right, even as he feared the consequences. What gave him courage? Had it always been there under the surface? If you’re interested in brain science and the psychology behind courage, this is a great piece. At the end, it offers techniques on how to “practice courage,” such as going out of your comfort zone and taking care of your body when it’s afraid.

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries is a psychoanalyst, management scholar, and executive coach. At INSEAD in France, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore , he is the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change. He wrote Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership: Leadership Pathology in Everyday Life (2018).

“The Six Attributes of Courage” – Melanie Greenberg

What is courage? It’s something most people recognize when they see it, but there are different kinds of courage. In this essay, Dr. Greenberg briefly describes six defining characteristics of courage. She uses quotes from people like Nelson Mandela, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others. Attributes include following your heart and letting go of what’s familiar and comfortable. The piece concludes with a courage-building exercise.

Dr. Melanie Greenberg is a psychologist, speaker, author, and coach. Her book The Stress-Proof Brain is an Amazon bestseller. She travels the world giving talks to non-profits, businesses, and professional organizations. Active on Twitter, she has been featured in media like CNN, Forbes, BBC Radio, and more.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Study Today

Largest Compilation of Structured Essays and Exams

Essay on Courage – What is Courage Essay and Importance of Courage Essay in English

June 16, 2021 by Manasi Shewale Leave a Comment

Table of Contents

What is Courage?

If we go to see for the actual or literal meaning of courage, it refers to “an act of bravery or to do a challenging task without being afraid”. Now, when we speak of doing a challenging or a difficult task that does not mean to go and act rashly or do some unlawful thing.

A courageous act can be a small act also which is done when a person overcomes his fear and then goes and performs the act. It can be anything, for example, a small girl who loves dancing but is afraid of the stage where she must perform. When she overcomes her fear and becomes brave enough to perform her dance, it is called a courageous act.

Why is Courage Important?

To be courageous or to have that much confidence to overcome our fear is courage. We fight our fear in our daily lives as well. For example, when a person goes for an interview, he or she will feel some kind of nervousness or anxiety or insecurity about his/ her skills.

These feelings and the emotional state of mind can affect one’s behavior and therefore, have a bad effect on his/ her interview. Therefore, it can be said that being courageous enough to make use of the given opportunity is a very essential factor in today’s world of competition.

We all know the hardships faced by every working person in our country. The hardships regarding studies, career, a person having a very good (but stressful) job, etc. all require some or the other courageous input to achieve the goal.

Even the first day of our college needs us to gather up some courage and make some good self-introduction and make some friends. The first impression is the best (or the last) impression. This is the most famous saying and therefore, we need to have enough courage to stand up for ourselves and make an impression.

Now, as there are some above mentioned situations where we need courage for our own benefit, similarly, there are other situations where we need to be brave, not for our benefit but for the entire society or our environment, etc.

For example, it takes courage for a person to fight against the injustice faced by him or his fellow companion. The best example of this can be of the farmers. Today’s situation of the farmers’ financial condition and the ongoing summer season is going to take a heavy toll on the farmer to earn the daily bread.

To fight against this condition, they need many things but courage will be the most basic thing required by all to at least stand up against the situation and demand for their rights.

There are many other unjust events happening in our daily lives, for example, eve teasing, a very bad aspect of today’s modern world. A girl has to face such rude and humiliating behavior everyday and neither the girl says anything against it nor does the people around her come to her aid to support if she is courageous enough to oppose to such public humiliation.

This is the real problem that is along with courage, one needs proper support and guidance to fight such events and bring out a change for the betterment of the society.

All these were examples of how a person needs courage and proper morals to fight for the injustice faced by himself and others. It is very difficult to keep up your morals and therefore, gather up the necessary courage to fight against the wrong situations.

Therefore, in todays date, it is even rarer to find a person with the proper morals required to live a satisfactory life.

Another aspect of having courage comes with adventurous activities. This type of courage is required to go on carrying physical adventurous activities. Many people of scared of adventures and therefore, they do not know how exhilarating it feels after completing the adventurous tasks or activity.

For example, a person wants to go scuba diving or sky diving but is afraid of the water or the height and the speed or maybe the pressure or anything which he finds will hurt him physically. Now, a person needs courage to overcome this fear and therefore, go ahead and live that adventure.

No third person is involved in pushing away one’s fear in case of such physical activities. The person should be brave enough and should have that mind set, that yes, he needs to jump of the cliff (adventure only) and then only will he be able to live the adventure and enjoy it to the fullest.

There are similar sensitive topics where courage is the need. We have the required strength to fight against the black holes but we do not have enough courage or we do not have the trigger that is needed to fight these social demons as well as our personal fears.

Courage is not a feeling neither is it an emotion, it is a trigger which when triggered with enough force can make wonders and bring in a change in his life as well as in the society to live the better and face the bitter aspects of life.

These are different aspects of life which may include some adventures, some social stressful situations, personal issues, etc. which require courage at both, physical as well as the moral level to overcome the fear and be brave enough to live our lives satisfactorily.

About Manasi Shewale

Manasi Shewale loves to read novels and review them inturn. She is an avid reader of various topics of scientific interest in Chemistry and Biology.

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Top Trending Essays in March 2021

• Essay on Pollution
• Essay on my School
• Summer Season
• My favourite teacher
• World heritage day quotes
• my family speech
• importance of trees essay
• autobiography of a pen
• honesty is the best policy essay
• essay on building a great india
• my favourite book essay
• essay on caa
• my favourite player
• autobiography of a river
• farewell speech for class 10 by class 9
• essay my favourite teacher 200 words
• internet influence on kids essay
• my favourite cartoon character

Brilliantly

Content & links.

Verified by Sur.ly

Essay for Students

• Essay for Class 1 to 5 Students

Scholarships for Students

• Class 1 Students Scholarship
• Class 2 Students Scholarship
• Class 3 Students Scholarship
• Class 4 Students Scholarship
• Class 5 students Scholarship
• Class 6 Students Scholarship
• Class 7 students Scholarship
• Class 8 Students Scholarship
• Class 9 Students Scholarship
• Class 10 Students Scholarship
• Class 11 Students Scholarship
• Class 12 Students Scholarship

STAY CONNECTED

• About Study Today
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions

Scholarships

• Apj Abdul Kalam Scholarship
• Ashirwad Scholarship
• Bihar Scholarship
• Canara Bank Scholarship
• Colgate Scholarship
• Dr Ambedkar Scholarship
• E District Scholarship
• Epass Karnataka Scholarship
• Fair And Lovely Scholarship
• Floridas John Mckay Scholarship
• Inspire Scholarship
• Jio Scholarship
• Karnataka Minority Scholarship
• Lic Scholarship
• Maulana Azad Scholarship
• Medhavi Scholarship
• Minority Scholarship
• Moma Scholarship
• Mp Scholarship
• Muslim Minority Scholarship
• Nsp Scholarship
• Oasis Scholarship
• Obc Scholarship
• Odisha Scholarship
• Pfms Scholarship
• Post Matric Scholarship
• Pre Matric Scholarship
• Prerana Scholarship
• Prime Minister Scholarship
• Rajasthan Scholarship
• Santoor Scholarship
• Sitaram Jindal Scholarship
• Ssp Scholarship
• Swami Vivekananda Scholarship
• Ts Epass Scholarship
• Up Scholarship
• Vidhyasaarathi Scholarship
• Wbmdfc Scholarship
• West Bengal Minority Scholarship
• Click Here Now!!

Mobile Number

Have you Burn Crackers this Diwali ? Yes No

• Classroom Activities
• Middle School
• High School
• Helpful Articles
• Dangers of Vaping/JUULing
• Ethical Dilemmas Archive
• Service Learning
• Character Ed in Sports
• Organizations
• School-to-Work
• Elem Classroom Activities
• Useful Links
• Live Wire Media
• Vaping & Juuling
• Careers & Financial Literacy
• Social Media & Cyber Safety
• Mindfulness
• Character Counts!
• Character Education
• Sex & Dating
• Social Emotional Learning
• Drugs & Alcohol
• Setting Goals
• Michael Pritchard

Teaching Guide: COURAGE

• For grades 7-12

This material is from the teaching guide for the video  “ Courage “ in the 10-part DVD series In Search of Character

Are You a Person of Courage? (Take this self-evaluation and decide for yourself.)

“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr .

(If you wish to copy or use any material from this website, please click here for Terms of Use.)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

If you are using the video, ask questions 1&2 before viewing.

1. Thomas Jefferson said that one person with courage is a majority. What does that mean to you?

2. What is courage?

3. How did Arturo’s story (in the video) make you feel? What did you learn from it? What were some of the pressures Arturo encountered and how did he overcome them? What risks did he take, and why? How big a factor was courage in Arturo’s success? Is it realistic to think that the average teenager could stand up for him/herself the way Arturo did, or is Arturo just a special case?

4. What is moral courage? What are some historic and recent examples of moral courage or moral cowardice?

5. What things in your life require moral courage?

6. Is peer pressure a very strong influence in this school? Does it take courage to resist peer pressure?

7. What does it mean to have principles? What are some of your principles? How much are you willing to risk for your principles? Would you risk being criticized or losing popularity?

8. What do you think stops people from taking a stand against something they know is wrong?

9. In the Arturo documentary, Joe Marshall distinguished between fearship and friendship . What do you think he meant by fearship? How does it differ from friendship? Can you give any examples from your own experience?

10. Some of the teens in this video talked about standing up for kids who were being picked on. Have you ever stood up for someone who was being picked on or treated unfairly? Would you do it again? What did you learn from that experience?

11. Are there kids in your school who pick on others? How do you feel about it? Why do people allow that to happen? What could you do about it?

12. Dr. Mike’s co-host, S.E., quoted an old saying that you can’t discover new continents without losing sight of land. What does that mean to you? Have you ever had that kind of an experience? What did you learn from it?

13. Dr. Mike talked about having the courage to be yourself. What do you think that means? How can it require courage to be yourself?

14. Dr. Mike said that evil will continue to triumph as long as good people do nothing. What does that mean? Do you agree?

15. Is courage something you have to be born with, or can you develop it?

16. What does courage have to do with the quality of your character?

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

1. Pick any of the discussion questions, above, and write an essay on it.

2. Describe a situation in which you showed moral courage. What was hard about it? What did it accomplish? How did people respond before you took your stand? What did they say to you afterwards?.

3. What was the hardest stand you ever had to take with your friends? Did it cost you anything? What were the benefits?

4. Have you ever gone along with the crowd even though you knew it was wrong? How did you feel about yourself? What did you learn from it?

5. Write about a time when you had to give up friends because they became a negative force in your life? In what way did that take courage?

6. In what ways have you demonstrated courage in your life?

7. Consider the following behavioral definition of what courage means: – Stand up for what is right, even if you stand alone. – Don’t cave in to negative peer pressure. – Don’t avoid trying something for fear of making a mistake or failing. – Don’t be afraid to express yourself just because some people might disapprove. Write an essay on any or all of the points in this definition of courage.

8. Write a letter to someone in the news whose courage has impressed you.

9. Write an essay about a historical event in which courage played a major role. (The civil rights movement offers many good examples.)

Other teaching guides in this series:

STUDENT ACTIVITIES

1. What does it take to stand up against negative peer pressure? As a class, discuss the kinds of peer pressure that exist at your school. What makes it difficult to resist these pressures? Develop some good strategies for standing up to them. Compile this into a written report for the students in your school.

2. Profiles in Courage: Have the students, either individually or in groups, identify acts of courage by people in the news or by people in your school or community. Then have each individual or group make a presentation to the class and conduct a discussion. What do these selections have in common? What are their differences? What can the students learn about themselves from the selections they made? What have they learned from the people they selected?

3. Have your students bring in articles from magazines and newspapers describing situations in which moral courage is an issue. Conduct a discussion in which they decide who is acting courageously and who isn’t. What difference does it make?

4. Role play some typical situations which require taking a courageous stand against a group or an individual. After each improvisation have a discussion. What important principle or issue was at stake? How well did the individual stand up? What could he/she have done better? What did you learn from this?

5. Have your students search the web for quotations and other inspiring or provocative writings on courage. Compile this into a book.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up for what’s right when we stand alone. Or to do what’s right despite disapproval and negative peer pressure. Learn more . . .

Click play for a sampling of “In Search of Character”

This award winning DVD series spotlights ten core virtues that help teens develop into caring, respectful, responsible people who make choices based on what’s right, rather than what they can get away with. Learn more . . .

For more information about individual videos in this series, click on the title below.

If your school or organization does not have these videos, you can purchase them from Live Wire Media , or request them from your local library.

Share this:

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Education Articles & More

Six ways to find your courage during challenging times, courage doesn’t have to look dramatic or fearless. sometimes it looks more like quiet perseverance..

“We teach who we are,” says educational philosopher Parker Palmer.

Early in my teaching career, I participated in a series of retreats led by the Center for Courage and Renewal, inspired by Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach . Palmer reminds us that our sense of self plays out in our work every day—and living with courage and integrity means finding balance and alignment between our inner and outer selves. In other words, our identities, values, and beliefs inform the selves we bring to others.

But how do we find the courage to stand up for our coworkers, students, neighbors, family and friends, and ourselves amid exhausting and unprecedented challenges? The truth is, I’m not particularly thrilled with the person I’ve been bringing to work lately. On some mornings, I’m simply looking for the courage to get out of bed.

If you are like me, there are days when you feel emotionally weary, inept, and cynical—all characteristics of burnout . However, I’m finding that the science of courage offers a psychological lifeline, helping us to clarify what really matters so that we can find a steadier, values-based resolve—and even inspire it in others. I dove into the courage research with teachers in mind, but these tips are for everyone.

Fortunately, courage comes in many forms. Although definitions range, researchers tend to agree that it features three primary components: a risk, an intention, and a goal that may benefit others. In a classic example, a student defends a peer who is being verbally assaulted by a bully, by interrupting the bully and telling them to stop. This purposeful act may come at a cost—perhaps socially or physically.

But courage doesn’t have to look dramatic or fearless. We express it in both bold and quiet ways. In fact, “ general courage ,” the confident or seemingly brazen actions perceived by others, differs from “ personal courage ,” those actions that are courageous in the minds of the actors themselves. It all depends on how you view the challenge in front of you and the fears associated with performing a particular behavior. In other words, these days, some of us may need significant “personal courage” to get out of bed and face the day on behalf of those students we value and care about.

Why is just showing up courageous? Daily stressors can pile up, leading to emotional exhaustion, a sense of detachment from your work, and the feeling that you simply aren’t as capable as you thought you were—and if you don’t feel capable, you may not feel particularly confident. Yet courage is also associated with other positive character strengths , like persistence and integrity.

The good news is that there are many ways to tap into our capacity for courage, whether we are adults or students. Here are six.

1. See yourself as courageous

First, if we describe ourselves as “courageous,” we are more likely to act courageously . In other words, if I tell myself that I’m a courageous person as I park in the school parking lot and walk into my school, it may actually give me a psychological boost and inspire me to meet the day with greater self-assurance.

Alternatively, we can take time to note and label all the courageous actions we have already taken in our lives. For example, when you consider how your childhood struggles inform your current relationships with coworkers or students, or how you made it through college as a single mom, or how you’ve learned to cope with a chronic health issue, you may be more likely to experience positive emotions while reconnecting with personal values and beliefs that can inspire future courageous behaviors.

Consider conducting an inventory of past actions with your students or colleagues so that you can identify and celebrate individual acts of courage together. Then, discuss how those actions influence who you are now and who you want to be.

2. Get comfortable with “mistakes”

We can recognize and celebrate courage with others, but it can also be a very internal, day-to-day experience. One of the most common ways we practice courage at work is in our pursuit of learning and personal growth. Research tells us that fear of failure can negatively correlate with courage, but what if it’s OK to make mistakes—and they are even welcomed learning tools?

Studies indicate that students may benefit from making mistakes (and correcting them) rather than avoiding them at all costs. And when researchers reviewed 38 studies of resilience in response to failure, errors, or mistakes, they found that more resilient individuals had lower levels of perfectionism and a more positive way of explaining past events: “I haven’t solved this long division problem yet, but I’ll try another strategy next.”

Another way to address fear of failure is through a simple practice you can share with your students or colleagues called “ Crumpled Reminder ,” where you write about a recent mistake you made, crumple up a paper representing your feelings about that mistake, and then discuss the ways mistakes strengthen brain activity and help us to learn and grow.

Crumpled Reminder

Write down a recent mistake and your feelings about it, and then crumple up the paper. Then reflect on how your mistakes help you learn.

Rather than fearing looming “failures,” seeing daily missteps as opportunities for learning frees all of us to appreciate learning for what it is—a process rather than a performance.

3. Keep trying

Courage at work also requires perseverance. As our fears lessen, we are more likely to persist in learning—to keep trying despite the obstacles ahead of us. And perseverance (or persistence), as a character strength, can also be modeled, observed, and developed. In fact, when adults model persistence in working toward a goal, infants as young as 15 months tend to mimic that behavior.

As teachers, we have a lot of power to influence our students’ efforts by sharing our own vulnerabilities while we read a challenging text, our own self-conscious emotions as we outline a timed essay, our stops and starts while solving a word problem, and our commitment to keep going.

And research suggests that teachers’ growth mindsets, or belief that intelligence grows and changes with effort, can be linked to the development of students’ growth mindsets. This more positive, flexible mindset can improve students’ performance at school, boost their well-being and social competence , and even promote kind, helpful, and prosocial actions. All these benefits may bolster our capacity for courageous actions, too.

4. Look for the heroes

Of course, if we are feeling apathetic, anxious, or fearful about stepping up and doing that next best thing at school or in life, it can be helpful to draw inspiration from others—whether near or far, real or fictional.

According to research , the individuals we admire may represent some aspect of our ideal selves as they demonstrate moral courage through difficult times and a desire to do good in the world. They can also inspire us to live more meaningful lives. Studies suggest that seeing images of heroes may move us to sense greater meaning in our lives—and even increase our drive to help others.

Basic social cognitive theory tells us that we are motivated through “vicarious experiences”—as we witness others’ actions. In fact, when adults observe courageous behaviors in their workplaces , like a teacher standing up for a group of students or a colleague advocating for an important policy, they are more likely to see the potential for organizational change and feel inspired to act courageously themselves.

Our students can benefit from models of courage, too. In the “ Who Are Your Heroes? ” lesson from Giraffe Heroes Project , students listen to and present hero stories, while exploring the risks and benefits of courageous acts. Stories like these can communicate shared values , make us more  empathic , and may  encourage us to help others .

5. Clarify your values

You may recognize heroism or courage in others, but sometimes struggle to see it in yourself. If so, it may be helpful to ask yourself a few key questions:

• What do I value in myself?
• What do I “stand for”?
• What is important to me?
• What are some of my successes and accomplishments?

When researchers measured teachers’ responses to prompts like these, they found that teachers’ anxiety immediately decreased—and they experienced more positive emotions over time when compared to a control group. Teachers’ values drive their goals and behaviors at school, while supporting their well-being and a sense of self-efficacy at work. If we feel clear and capable, we may also feel more courageous.

Philosophers consider courage to be a foundational virtue because it guides us to act on behalf of other virtues or values. In fact, our convictions, values, sense of integrity, honor, and loyalty can all influence our courageous actions. When we experience a threat to our moral code, we are likely to act in a way that upholds our beliefs and values. And the more powerful the belief , the more likely you will not be influenced or swayed by those around you.

You and your students can clarify your values and explore your character strengths through a range of simple practices for both adults and students , like Discovering Your Strengths and Talents , Eight Inner Strengths for Leaders , and Reminders that Encourage Moral Character Strengths .

6. Become part of a social force for courage

Finally, we can act on our values in community. After more than a year of isolation from each other—and the prospect of ongoing public health, environmental, and sociocultural crises—we are finding courage again in groups.

More Education Resources

Visit Greater Good in Education for more information, tips, and practices to support teacher and student well-being. To dive deeper into the research behind these practices and strategies, register for one of our online courses for educators .

Teachers and students are participating in social and emotional communities of practice, circles of courage , and other “ circles ” practices to nurture a sense of belonging, find emotional support, and engage in collective action. Studies indicate that social groups like these promote interdependence, social identity, and cohesion and influence courageous behavior, too.

And one of the most empowering things we can do for our students right now is to support them in being courageous community problem solvers, too.

Tribes Learning Communities  curricula focus on active learning and community building among adults and students to reduce violence and increase kindness. For example, in their lesson “ Put Down the Put-Downs ,” students consider how hurtful name-calling really feels and brainstorm ways to end the problem in their classrooms and school. In this case, perspective taking and empathic responses can lead to more courageous and impassioned student action, cultivating a positive school and classroom climates where everyone is  honored and valued .

Further, in the lesson “ It’s Up to Us to Stick Our Necks Out ,” students share stories about everyday heroes drawn from a free story bank , and then learn to “Be the Story” by selecting, planning, and enacting a service learning project to address a community challenge (such as homelessness, clean air or water, or a need for increased literacy). As we act on our values together, we may feel a greater sense of agency in a world that feels topsy-turvy right now.

During those dark, winter mornings when you really don’t want to crawl out of bed and face the day, remember that courage can also be a very private, personal act. There will always be risks and challenges to face, but what really matters most—in your gut? Is it love, learning, curiosity, compassion, hope? How do these values inform who you are and how you show up in the world?

These are the key questions that can help us to frame our truest intentions—even on our most difficult days.

New Course! Courage in Education

Face Challenges with Strength, Determination, and Hope

About the Author

Amy L. Eva, Ph.D. , is the associate education director at the Greater Good Science Center. As an educational psychologist and teacher educator with over 25 years in classrooms, she currently writes, presents, and leads online courses focused on student and educator well-being, mindfulness, and courage. Her new book, Surviving Teacher Burnout: A Weekly Guide To Build Resilience, Deal with Emotional Exhaustion, and Stay Inspired in the Classroom, features 52 simple, low-lift strategies for enhancing educators’ social and emotional well-being.

You May Also Enjoy

This article — and everything on this site — is funded by readers like you.

Become a subscribing member today. Help us continue to bring “the science of a meaningful life” to you and to millions around the globe.

The College Study

Essay, Letter , Paragrah , Aplication

Short Essay on Courage for Students

Often people speak of two kinds of courage, that is, physical and moral courage. Physical courage means readiness to face dangers, to fight against difficulties and to make a brave struggle. Moral courage is of a higher quality than physical courage. It means the courage to speak the truth and to do the right thing without caring about the results. It also means readiness to accept one’s faults or mistakes. We make use of the strength of character while showing moral courage.

Any person who wants to succeed well in life should have physical as well as moral courage. He should be ready to face dangers and difficulties physically. And, he should also be ready to express his ideas and beliefs openly. If he can show outer strength of the body, he should also be able to show inner strength of character. He should always be ready to support truth and justice.

A truly courageous person succeeds in life, sooner or later. If he does not succeed in achieving his aims for some time, he does not lose heart and goes on trying to achieve them. For example, a student may not be able to pass his examination in his first attempt. He may pass it very easily and well in his second attempt. A general may be defeated in a certain battle. He may succeed in another, bigger battle at another place. A trader may suffer great losses in business for some time, but he may have profits sometime later. Thus, all these people succeed through courage to face failures in life.[the_ad id=”17141″]

Courage is needed by any person who wants to do anything truly new. A scientist needs the courage to make an invention. He goes on making efforts for a long time to invent or discover something new. He fails in his efforts a number of times. Yet he does not get disappointed. He continues trying in a courageous way until he really succeeds. A player has to struggle hard to become famous. He may face defeating a number of times. Yet if he has courage he goes on making efforts to play better. He may begin winning matches and become a star.

A nation as a whole needs courage to maintain (keep up) its independence. A really courageous nation is always ready to fight against any country that attacks it. It even tries to help other countries if their independence is in danger. It lives with honour and dignity and wants other nations to live thus. In no way does it make a negative use of courage. It does not use force against any country to trouble it or to occupy any part of its territory.

We should have the courage to speak and do what is right and just. We should also have the courage to tell others when they are in the wrong.

[ PDF Download ]

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Contest Topic and Information

Contest information.

In  Profiles in Courage , John F. Kennedy recounted the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers to do what was right for the nation. These leaders demonstrated political courage by taking a stand for the public good in spite of pressure by interest groups, their political party, or even their constituents. The Profile in Courage Essay Contest challenges students to write an original and creative essay that demonstrates an understanding of  political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in  Profiles in Courage .

The maximum word count is 1,000 with a minimum of 700, not including citations and bibliography. Use at least five varied sources such as government documents, letters, newspaper articles, books, and/or personal interviews. All submissions must adhere to  contest requirements .

The contest deadline is January 12, 2024.

Contest Topic

Describe and analyze an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after  1917 , the year John F. Kennedy was born. Include an analysis of the obstacles, risks, and consequences associated with the act. The essay may concern an issue at the local, state, national, or international level.

Since originality is one of the criteria for judging, we strongly encourage students to profile an official in their town, state or region, or a leader who has addressed an issue of great concern to them. We advise students to avoid selecting a common essay subject. To assist in determining common essay subjects, please see the list below.

List of Most Written About Essay Subjects - We advise that participants avoid writing about officials on this list.

Contest Policies

All entries must must include a completed registration form and be submitted by 11:59pm (EST) on January 12, 2024 to be eligible for judging.  The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation is not responsible for lost, late, misdirected, damaged, illegible, or incomplete submissions.

Decisions of the  Profile in Courage Award Committee  are final. Winners will be notified by email and via telephone by April 30. All participants will receive a letter notifying them of the winners along with a Certificate of Participation by the end of May.

By entering, you agree that your essay will become the property of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and will not be returned. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation reserves the right to print and display the essays and photographs of the contest winners.

Contact the Contest Coordinator

Important Note: Before contacting the Profile in Courage Essay Contest Coordinator, please be sure to read over the  FAQ  section of this web site.

Email:  [email protected] . 

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Five Takeaways From Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Essay on the ‘Colorblindness’ Trap

How a 50-year campaign has undermined the progress of the civil rights movement.

By Nikole Hannah-Jones

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer at the magazine and the creator of The 1619 Project. She also teaches race and journalism at Howard University.

Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action in college admissions was not constitutional. After the decision, much of the discussion was about its impact on the complexions of college campuses. But in an essay in The Times Magazine, I argue that we were missing the much bigger and more frightening story: that the death of affirmative action marks the culmination of a radical 50-year strategy to subvert the goal of colorblindness put forth by civil rights activists, by transforming it into a means of undermining racial justice efforts in a way that will threaten our multiracial democracy.

What do I mean by this? Here are the basic points of my essay:

The affirmative-action ruling could bring about sweeping changes across American society.

Conservatives are interpreting the court’s ruling broadly, and since last summer, they have used it to attack racial-justice programs outside the field of higher education. Since the decision, conservative groups have filed and threatened lawsuits against a range of programs that consider race, from diversity fellowships at law firms to maternal-health programs. One such group has even challenged the medical school of Howard University, one of the nation’s pre-eminent historically Black universities. Founded to educate people who had been enslaved, Howard’s mission has been to serve Black Americans who had for generations been systematically excluded from American higher education. These challenges to racial-justice programs will have a lasting impact on the nation’s ability to address the vast disparities that Black people experience.

Conservatives have co-opted the civil rights language of ‘colorblindness.’

In my essay, I demonstrate that these challenges to racial-justice programs often deploy the logic of “colorblindness,” the idea that the Constitution prohibits the use of race to distinguish citizens and that the goal of a diverse, democratic nation should be a society in which race does not determine outcomes for anyone. Civil rights leaders used the idea of colorblindness to challenge racial apartheid laws and policies, but over the last 50 years, conservatives have successfully co-opted both the rhetoric and the legal legacy of the civil rights era not to advance racial progress, but to stall it. And, I’d argue, reverse it.

Though the civil rights movement is celebrated and commemorated as a proud period in American history, it faced an immediate backlash. The progressive activists who advanced civil rights for Black Americans argued that in a society that used race against Black Americans for most of our history, colorblindness is a goal. They believed that achieving colorblindness requires race-conscious policies, such as affirmative action, that worked specifically to help Black people overcome their disadvantages in order to get to a point where race no longer hindered them. Conservatives, however, invoke the idea of colorblindness to make the case that race-conscious programs, even to help those whose race had been used against them for generations, are antithetical to the Constitution. In the affirmative-action decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, embraced this idea of colorblindness, saying: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

The Supreme Court’s decision undermines attempts to eliminate racial inequality that descendants of slavery suffer.

But mandating colorblindness in this way erases the fact that Black Americans still suffer inequality in every measurable aspect of American life — from poverty to access to quality neighborhoods and schools to health outcomes to wealth — and that this inequality stems from centuries of oppressive race-specific laws and policies. This way of thinking about colorblindness has reached its legal apotheosis on the Roberts court, where through rulings on schools and voting the Supreme Court has helped constitutionalize a colorblindness that leaves racial disparities intact while striking down efforts to ameliorate them.

These past decisions have culminated in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which can be seen as the Supreme Court clearing the way to eliminate the last legal tools to try to level the playing field for people who descend from slavery.

Affirmative action should not simply be a tool for diversity but should alleviate the particular conditions of descendants of slavery.

Part of the issue, I argue, is that the purpose of affirmative action got muddled in the 1970s. It was originally designed to reduce the suffering and improve the material conditions of people whose ancestors had been enslaved in this country. But the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1978 Bakke case changed the legally permissible goals of affirmative action, turning it into a generalized diversity program. That has opened the door for conservatives to attack the program for focusing on superficial traits like skin color, rather than addressing affirmative action's original purpose, which was to provide redress for the disadvantages descendants of slavery experienced after generations of oppression and subordination.

Working toward racial justice is not just the moral thing to do, but it is also crucial to our democracy.

When this country finally abolished slavery, it was left with a fundamental question: How does a white-majority nation, which wielded race-conscious policies and laws to enslave and oppress Black people, create a society in which race no longer matters? After the short-lived period of Reconstruction, lawmakers intent on helping those who had been enslaved become full citizens passed a slate of race-conscious laws. Even then, right at the end of slavery, the idea that this nation owed something special to those who had suffered under the singular institution of slavery faced strident opposition, and efforts at redress were killed just 12 years later with Reconstruction’s end. Instead, during the nearly 100-year period known as Jim Crow, descendants of slavery were violently subjected to a dragnet of racist laws that kept them from most opportunities and also prevented America from becoming a true democracy. During the civil rights era, when Black Americans were finally assured full legal rights of citizenship, this question once again presented itself: In order to address the disadvantage Black Americans faced, do we ignore race to eliminate its power, or do we consciously use race to undo its harms? Affirmative action and other racial-justice programs were born of that era, but now, once again, we are in a period of retrenchment and backlash that threatens the stability of our nation. My essay argues that if we are to preserve our multiracial democracy, we must find a way to address our original sin.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a domestic correspondent for The New York Times Magazine focusing on racial injustice. Her extensive reporting in both print and radio has earned a Pulitzer Prize, National Magazine Award, Peabody and a Polk Award. More about Nikole Hannah-Jones

The War at Stanford

I didn’t know that college would be a factory of unreason.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here .

ne of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year-old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated in the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).” El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he “doesn’t mean Hamas is perfect”). When you ask him what his cause is, he answers: “Peace.”

I switched to a different computer-science section.

Israel is 7,500 miles away from Stanford’s campus, where I am a sophomore. But the Hamas invasion and the Israeli counterinvasion have fractured my university, a place typically less focused on geopolitics than on venture-capital funding for the latest dorm-based tech start-up. Few students would call for Biden’s head—I think—but many of the same young people who say they want peace in Gaza don’t seem to realize that they are in fact advocating for violence. Extremism has swept through classrooms and dorms, and it is becoming normal for students to be harassed and intimidated for their faith, heritage, or appearance—they have been called perpetrators of genocide for wearing kippahs, and accused of supporting terrorism for wearing keffiyehs. The extremism and anti-Semitism at Ivy League universities on the East Coast have attracted so much media and congressional attention that two Ivy presidents have lost their jobs. But few people seem to have noticed the culture war that has taken over our California campus.

For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The “Sit-In to Stop Genocide” encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the “Blue and White Tent” to provide, as one activist put it, a “safe space” to “be a proud Jew on campus.” Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in.

Some days the dueling encampments would host only a few people each, but on a sunny weekday afternoon, there could be dozens. Most of the time, the groups tolerated each other. But not always. Students on both sides were reportedly spit on and yelled at, and had their belongings destroyed. (The perpetrators in many cases seemed to be adults who weren’t affiliated with Stanford, a security guard told me.) The university put in place round-the-clock security, but when something actually happened, no one quite knew what to do.

Conor Friedersdorf: How October 7 changed America’s free speech culture

Stanford has a policy barring overnight camping, but for months didn’t enforce it, “out of a desire to support the peaceful expression of free speech in the ways that students choose to exercise that expression”—and, the administration told alumni, because the university feared that confronting the students would only make the conflict worse. When the school finally said the tents had to go last month, enormous protests against the university administration, and against Israel, followed.

“We don’t want no two states! We want all of ’48!” students chanted, a slogan advocating that Israel be dismantled and replaced by a single Arab nation. Palestinian flags flew alongside bright “Welcome!” banners left over from new-student orientation. A young woman gave a speech that seemed to capture the sense of urgency and power that so many students here feel. “We are Stanford University!” she shouted. “We control things!”

“W e’ve had protests in the past,” Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November—about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit “students against each other” the way that this conflict has.

I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist. We first met in September, a few weeks into his tenure. His predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had resigned as president after my reporting for The Stanford Daily exposed misconduct in his academic research. (Tessier-Lavigne had failed to retract papers with faked data over the course of 20 years. In his resignation statement , he denied allegations of fraud and misconduct; a Stanford investigation determined that he had not personally manipulated data or ordered any manipulation but that he had repeatedly “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” from his lab.)

In that first conversation, Saller told me that everyone was “eager to move on” from the Tessier-Lavigne scandal. He was cheerful and upbeat. He knew he wasn’t staying in the job long; he hadn’t even bothered to move into the recently vacated presidential manor. In any case, campus, at that time, was serene. Then, a week later, came October 7.

The attack was as clear a litmus test as one could imagine for the Middle East conflict. Hamas insurgents raided homes and a music festival with the goal of slaughtering as many civilians as possible. Some victims were raped and mutilated, several independent investigations found. Hundreds of hostages were taken into Gaza and many have been tortured.

This, of course, was bad. Saying this was bad does not negate or marginalize the abuses and suffering Palestinians have experienced in Gaza and elsewhere. Everyone, of every ideology, should be able to say that this was bad. But much of this campus failed that simple test.

Two days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Stanford released milquetoast statements marking the “moment of intense emotion” and declaring “deep concern” over “the crisis in Israel and Palestine.” The official statements did not use the words Hamas or violence .

The absence of a clear institutional response led some teachers to take matters into their own hands. During a mandatory freshman seminar on October 10, a lecturer named Ameer Loggins tossed out his lesson plan to tell students that the actions of the Palestinian “military force” had been justified, that Israelis were colonizers, and that the Holocaust had been overemphasized, according to interviews I conducted with students in the class. Loggins then asked the Jewish students to identify themselves. He instructed one of them to “stand up, face the window, and he kind of kicked away his chair,” a witness told me. Loggins described this as an effort to demonstrate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. (Loggins did not reply to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Stanford said that there were “different recollections of the details regarding what happened” in the class.)

“We’re only in our third week of college, and we’re afraid to be here,” three students in the class wrote in an email that night to administrators. “This isn’t what Stanford was supposed to be.” The class Loggins taught is called COLLEGE, short for “Civic, Liberal, and Global Education,” and it is billed as an effort to develop “the skills that empower and enable us to live together.”

Loggins was suspended from teaching duties and an investigation was opened; this angered pro-Palestine activists, who organized a petition that garnered more than 1,700 signatures contesting the suspension. A pamphlet from the petitioners argued that Loggins’s behavior had not been out of bounds.

The day after the class, Stanford put out a statement written by Saller and Jenny Martinez, the university provost, more forcefully condemning the Hamas attack. Immediately, this new statement generated backlash.

Pro-Palestine activists complained about it during an event held the same day, the first of several “teach-ins” about the conflict. Students gathered in one of Stanford’s dorms to “bear witness to the struggles of decolonization.” The grievances and pain shared by Palestinian students were real. They told of discrimination and violence, of frightened family members subjected to harsh conditions. But the most raucous reaction from the crowd was in response to a young woman who said, “You ask us, do we condemn Hamas? Fuck you!” She added that she was “so proud of my resistance.”

David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature with a focus on postcolonial studies, also spoke at the teach-in, explaining to the crowd that “European settlers” had come to “replace” Palestine’s “native population.”

Palumbo-Liu is known as an intelligent and supportive professor, and is popular among students, who call him by his initials, DPL. I wanted to ask him about his involvement in the teach-in, so we met one day in a café a few hundred feet away from the tents. I asked if he could elaborate on what he’d said at the event about Palestine’s native population. He was happy to expand: This was “one of those discussions that could go on forever. Like, who is actually native? At what point does nativism lapse, right? Well, you haven’t been native for X number of years, so …” In the end, he said, “you have two people who both feel they have a claim to the land,” and “they have to live together. Both sides have to cede something.”

The struggle at Stanford, he told me, “is to find a way in which open discussions can be had that allow people to disagree.” It’s true that Stanford has utterly failed in its efforts to encourage productive dialogue. But I still found it hard to reconcile DPL’s words with his public statements on Israel, which he’d recently said on Facebook should be “the most hated nation in the world.” He also wrote: “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus, I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel.” He continued: “Well as the saying goes, get used to it.”

Z ionists, and indeed Jewish students of all political beliefs, have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets. At least one was told he was a “dirty Jew.” At least twice, mezuzahs have been ripped from students’ doors, and swastikas have been drawn in dorms. Arab and Muslim students also face alarming threats. The computer-science section leader, El Boudali, a pro-Palestine activist, told me he felt “safe personally,” but knew others who did not: “Some people have reported feeling like they’re followed, especially women who wear the hijab.”

In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism. In January, Jewish students organized an event dedicated to ameliorating anti-Semitism. It marked one of Saller’s first public appearances in the new year. Its topic seemed uncontroversial, and I thought it would generate little backlash.

Protests began before the panel discussion even started, with activists lining the stairs leading to the auditorium. During the event they drowned out the panelists, one of whom was Israel’s special envoy for combatting anti-Semitism, by demanding a cease-fire. After participants began cycling out into the dark, things got ugly.

Activists, their faces covered by keffiyehs or medical masks, confronted attendees. “Go back to Brooklyn!” a young woman shouted at Jewish students. One protester, who emerged as the leader of the group, said that she and her compatriots would “take all of your places and ensure Israel falls.” She told attendees to get “off our fucking campus” and launched into conspiracy theories about Jews being involved in “child trafficking.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event, protesters pursued him, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, “We know your names and we know where you work.” The ringleader added: “And we’ll soon find out where you live.” The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.

S aller avoided the protest by leaving through another door. Early that morning, his private residence had been vandalized. Protesters frequently tell him he “can’t hide” and shout him down. “We charge you with genocide!” they chant, demanding that Stanford divest from Israel. (When asked whether Stanford actually invested in Israel, a spokesperson replied that, beyond small exposures from passive funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, the university’s endowment “has no direct holdings in Israeli companies, or direct holdings in defense contractors.”)

When the university finally said the protest tents had to be removed, students responded by accusing Saller of suppressing their right to free speech. This is probably the last charge he expected to face. Saller once served as provost at the University of Chicago, which is known for holding itself to a position of strict institutional neutrality so that its students can freely explore ideas for themselves. Saller has a lifelong belief in First Amendment rights. But that conviction in impartial college governance does not align with Stanford’s behavior in recent years. Despite the fact that many students seemed largely uninterested in the headlines before this year, Stanford’s administrative leadership has often taken positions on political issues and events, such as the Paris climate conference and the murder of George Floyd. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Stanford’s Hoover Tower was lit up in blue and yellow, and the school released a statement in solidarity.

Thomas Chatterton Williams: Let the activists have their loathsome rallies

When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? “On international political issues, no,” he said. “That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.”

But when Saller tried to apply his convictions on neutrality for the first time as president, dozens of faculty members condemned the response, many pro-Israel alumni were outraged, donors had private discussions about pulling funding, and an Israeli university sent an open letter to Saller and Martinez saying, “Stanford’s administration has failed us.” The initial statement had tried to make clear that the school’s policy was not Israel-specific: It noted that the university would not take a position on the turmoil in Nagorno-Karabakh (where Armenians are undergoing ethnic cleansing) either. But the message didn’t get through.

Saller had to beat an awkward retreat or risk the exact sort of public humiliation that he, as caretaker president, had presumably been hired to avoid. He came up with a compromise that landed somewhere in the middle: an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s “intolerable atrocities” paired with a statement making clear that Stanford would commit to institutional neutrality going forward.

“The events in Israel and Gaza this week have affected and engaged large numbers of students on our campus in ways that many other events have not,” the statement read. “This is why we feel compelled to both address the impact of these events on our campus and to explain why our general policy of not issuing statements about news events not directly connected to campus has limited the breadth of our comments thus far, and why you should not expect frequent commentary from us in the future.”

I asked Saller why he had changed tack on Israel and not on Nagorno-Karabakh. “We don’t feel as if we should be making statements on every war crime and atrocity,” he told me. This felt like a statement in and of itself.

In making such decisions, Saller works closely with Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a “priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.”

We talked about the so-called Leonard Law—a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so).

So I was surprised when, in December, the university announced that abstract calls for genocide “clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students at the university.” The statement was a response to the outrage following the congressional testimony of three university presidents—outrage that eventually led to the resignation of two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill. Gay and Magill, who had both previously held positions at Stanford, did not commit to punishing calls for the genocide of Jews.

Experts told me that Stanford’s policy is impossible to enforce—and Saller himself acknowledged as much in our March interview.

“Liz Magill is a good friend,” Saller told me, adding, “Having watched what happened at Harvard and Penn, it seemed prudent” to publicly state that Stanford rejected calls for genocide. But saying that those calls violate the code of conduct “is not the same thing as to say that we could actually punish it.”

Stanford’s leaders seem to be trying their best while adapting to the situation in real time. But the muddled messaging has created a policy of neutrality that does not feel neutral at all.

When we met back in November, I tried to get Saller to open up about his experience running an institution in turmoil. What’s it like to know that so many students seem to believe that he—a mild-mannered 71-year-old classicist who swing-dances with his anthropologist wife—is a warmonger? Saller was more candid than I expected—perhaps more candid than any prominent university president has been yet. We sat in the same conference room as we had in September. The weather hadn’t really changed. Yet I felt like I was sitting in front of a different person. He was hunched over and looked exhausted, and his voice broke when he talked about the loss of life in Gaza and Israel and “the fact that we’re caught up in it.” A capable administrator with decades of experience, Saller seemed almost at a loss. “It’s been a kind of roller coaster, to be honest.”

He said he hadn’t anticipated the deluge of the emails “blaming me for lack of moral courage.” Anything the university says seems bound to be wrong: “If I say that our position is that we grieve over the loss of innocent lives, that in itself will draw some hostile reactions.”

“I find that really difficult to navigate,” he said with a sigh.

By March, it seemed that his views had solidified. He said he knew he was “a target,” but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. “I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.” It’s hard to argue with that.

P eople tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed.

Elite universities attract a certain kind of student: the overachieving striver who has won all the right accolades for all the right activities. Is it such a surprise that the kids who are trained in the constant pursuit of perfect scores think they have to look at the world like a series of multiple-choice questions, with clearly right or wrong answers? Or that they think they can gamify a political cause in the same way they ace a standardized test?

Everyone knows that the only reliable way to get into a school like Stanford is to be really good at looking really good. Now that they’re here, students know that one easy way to keep looking good is to side with the majority of protesters, and condemn Israel.

It’s not that there isn’t real anger and anxiety over what is happening in Gaza—there is, and justifiably so. I know that among the protesters are many people who are deeply connected to this issue. But they are not the majority. What really activates the crowds now seems less a principled devotion to Palestine or to pacifism than a desire for collective action, to fit in by embracing the fashionable cause of the moment—as if a centuries-old conflict in which both sides have stolen and killed could ever be a simple matter of right and wrong. In their haste to exhibit moral righteousness, many of the least informed protesters end up being the loudest and most uncompromising.

Today’s students grew up in the Trump era, in which violent rhetoric has become a normal part of political discourse and activism is as easy as reposting an infographic. Many young people have come to feel that being angry is enough to foment change. Furious at the world’s injustices and desperate for a simple way to express that fury, they don’t seem interested in any form of engagement more nuanced than backing a pure protagonist and denouncing an evil enemy. They don’t, always, seem that concerned with the truth.

At the protest last month to prevent the removal of the sit-in, an activist in a pink Women’s March “pussy hat” shouted that no rape was committed by Hamas on October 7. “There hasn’t been proof of these rape accusations,” a student told me in a separate conversation, criticizing the Blue and White Tent for spreading what he considered to be misinformation about sexual violence. (In March, a United Nations report found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence,” including “rape and gang rape,” occurred in multiple locations on October 7, as well as “clear and convincing information” on the “rape and sexualized torture” of hostages.) “The level of propaganda” surrounding Hamas, he told me, “is just unbelievable.”

The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant “From the river to the sea.” This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza.

I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture—after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything.

I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: “Why are all Jews so rich?” In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of “Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions” represented “a very valid discussion.” (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door.

David Frum: There is no right to bully and harass

I grew up secularly, with no strong affiliation to Jewish culture. When I found out as a teenager that some of my ancestors had hidden their identity from their children and that dozens of my relatives had died in the Holocaust (something no living member of my family had known), I felt the barest tremor of identity. After I saw so many people I know cheering after October 7, I felt something stronger stir. I know others have experienced something similar. Even a professor texted me to say that she felt Jewish in a way she never had before.

But my frustration with the conflict on campus has little to do with my own identity. Across the many conversations and hours of formal interviews I conducted for this article, I’ve encountered a persistent anti-intellectual streak. I’ve watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party. Indeed, two parties at Stanford were reported to the university this fall for allegedly making people say “Fuck Israel” or “Free Palestine” to get in the door. A spokesperson for the university said it was “unable to confirm the facts of what occurred,” but that it had “met with students involved in both parties to make clear that Stanford’s nondiscrimination policy applies to parties.” As a friend emailed me not long ago: “A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.”

Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America.

And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this.

F or so long , Stanford’s physical standoff seemed intractable. Then, in early February, a storm swept in, and the natural world dictated its own conclusion.

Heavy rains flooded campus. For hours, the students battled to save their tents. The sit-in activists used sandbags and anything else they could find to hold back the water—at one point, David Palumbo-Liu, the professor, told me he stood in the lashing downpour to anchor one of the sit-in’s tents with his own body. When the storm hit, many of the Jewish activists had been attending a discussion on anti-Semitism. They raced back and struggled to salvage the Blue and White Tent, but it was too late—the wind had ripped it out of the ground.

The next day, the weary Jewish protesters returned to discover that their space had been taken.

A new collection of tents had been set up by El Boudali, the pro-Palestine activist, and a dozen friends. He said they were there to protest Islamophobia and to teach about Islam and jihad, and that they were a separate entity from the Sit-In to Stop Genocide, though I observed students cycling between the tents. Palestinian flags now flew from the bookstore to the quad.

Administrators told me they’d quickly informed El Boudali and his allies that the space had been reserved by the Jewish advocates, and offered to help move them to a different location. But the protesters told me they had no intention of going. (El Boudali later said that they did not take over the entire space, and would have been “happy to exist side by side, but they wanted to kick us off entirely from that lawn.”)

When it was clear that the area where they’d set up their tents would not be ceded back to the pro-Israel group willingly, Stanford changed course and decided to clear everyone out in one fell swoop. On February 8, school officials ordered all students to vacate the plaza overnight. The university was finally going to enforce its rule prohibiting people from sleeping outside on campus and requiring the removal of belongings from the plaza between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. The order cited the danger posed by the storm as a justification for changing course and, probably hoping to avoid allegations of bias, described the decision as “viewpoint-neutral.”

That didn’t work.

About a week of protests, led by the sit-in organizers, followed. Chants were chanted. More demands for a “river to the sea” solution to the Israel problem were made. A friend boasted to me about her willingness to be arrested. Stanford sent a handful of staff members, who stood near balloons left over from an event earlier in the day. They were there, one of them told me, to “make students feel supported and safe.”

In the end, Saller and Martinez agreed to talk with the leaders of the sit-in about their demands to divest the university and condemn Israel, under the proviso that the activists comply with Stanford’s anti-camping guidelines “regardless of the outcome of discussions.” Eight days after they were first instructed to leave, 120 days after setting up camp, the sit-in protesters slept in their own beds. In defiance of the university’s instructions, they left behind their tents. But sometime in the very early hours of the morning, law-enforcement officers confiscated the structures. The area was cordoned off without any violence and the plaza filled once more with electric skateboards and farmers’ markets.

The conflict continues in its own way. Saller was just shouted down by protesters chanting “No peace on stolen land” at a Family Weekend event, and protesters later displayed an effigy of him covered in blood. Students still feel tense; Saller still seems worried. He told me that the university is planning to change all manner of things—residential-assistant training, new-student orientation, even the acceptance letters that students receive—in hopes of fostering a culture of greater tolerance. But no campus edict or panel discussion can address a problem that is so much bigger than our university.

At one rally last fall, a speaker expressed disillusionment about the power of “peaceful resistance” on college campuses. “What is there left to do but to take up arms?” The crowd cheered as he said Israel must be destroyed. But what would happen to its citizens? I’d prefer to believe that most protesters chanting “Palestine is Arab” and shouting that we must “smash the Zionist settler state” don’t actually think Jews should be killed en masse. But can one truly be so ignorant as to advocate widespread violence in the name of peace?

When the world is rendered in black-and-white—portrayed as a simple fight between colonizer and colonized—the answer is yes. Solutions, by this logic, are absolute: Israel or Palestine, nothing in between. Either you support liberation of the oppressed or you support genocide. Either Stanford is all good or all bad; all in favor of free speech or all authoritarian; all anti-Semitic or all Islamophobic.

At January’s anti-anti-Semitism event, I watched an exchange between a Jewish attendee and a protester from a few feet away. “Are you pro-Palestine?” the protester asked.

“Yes,” the attendee responded, and he went on to describe his disgust with the human-rights abuses Palestinians have faced for years.

“But are you a Zionist?”

“Then we are enemies.”

Bay Shore case shows we must confront sexual abuse in schools

The allegations against teacher Thomas Bernagozzi, of the Bay Shore school district, are troubling and a stark reminder of the vulnerability of our children within the educational system. Credit: James Carbone

Recent reports of sexual abuse cases involving educators have once again brought the issue of safeguarding our children to the forefront of public discourse. Allegations against individuals like retired teacher Thomas Bernagozzi of the Bay Shore school district, and countless others nationwide, make clear we must address the systemic failures that allow such misconduct to occur and persist.

The allegations against Bernagozzi are troubling and a stark reminder of the vulnerability of our children within the educational system. Schools should be places of safety, trust, and growth; when those entrusted with our children’s education and well-being betray that trust, the repercussions are profound and long-lasting.

It is essential that we acknowledge the courage of survivors who come forward to share their stories, often in the face of skepticism and institutional resistance. Their bravery underscores the urgency for comprehensive reforms in how schools prevent, respond to, and address instances of sexual abuse.

First and foremost, accountability must be at the forefront of any response. Institutions must conduct thorough and impartial investigations into allegations of abuse, and perpetrators must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. This includes not only criminal prosecution but also civil remedies.

This guest essay reflects the views of Ralph Kohl, a graduate of Bay Shore schools, former state Assembly staff member, and government affairs professional specializing in health care in Alexandria, Virginia.

We also must prioritize prevention through education and training for educators, students, and parents. This includes fostering open dialogue about boundaries, consent, and healthy relationships from an early age, as well as implementing robust policies and procedures for reporting and addressing instances of misconduct.

From our Editorial Board, get inside the local, city and state political scenes.

By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy .

Beyond individual cases, we must also confront the broader cultural and systemic factors that enable sexual abuse to occur unchecked. This includes challenging harmful power dynamics, dismantling barriers to reporting, and fostering a culture of accountability and transparency within schools.

Ultimately, confronting sexual abuse in schools requires a collective effort from educators, administrators, lawmakers, and the broader community. It is incumbent on all of us to stand in solidarity with survivors, to demand accountability from those in positions of power, and to work tirelessly to ensure that every child has the right to learn and thrive in an environment free from fear and harm.

One of the most concerning aspects in Bay Shore is the apparent repetition of mistakes by the current administration, mirroring the mishandlings of past cases. By not believing their former students, victim-shaming, and failing to accept accountability, administrators not only undermine the trust of current students and parents but also send a chilling message that victims will not be believed or supported if they come forward with allegations of abuse.

This perpetuates an environment of fear, silence, and mistrust, further entrenching the barriers that prevent survivors from seeking justice and healing. Educational leaders must break this cycle of impunity and indifference by prioritizing the voices and experiences of survivors, fostering a culture of transparency and accountability and ensuring that every student feels empowered and supported to speak out against abuse. That’s how we can begin to rebuild trust, safeguard our children, and create safer learning environments for all.

It is time for the superintendent and school board to demonstrate courage and integrity by admitting the failures of the district, addressing them, and ensuring that survivors receive the support and justice they deserve. Anything less is a betrayal of trust and a grave disservice to the victims and their families, many of whom reside and have children in the district.