The Empathy Project is a new student initiative, created in Hilary Term 2025, by two students: James, who is Jewish, and Maryam, who is Muslim. Their goal is to heal the fractures between the Muslim, Jewish, Arab and Israeli communities, and bring people together in an apolitical space. They hosted two dinners in Hilary with the aim of expanding and growing the project.
What is The Empathy Project?
Maryam: The Empathy Project aims to bring together Muslims, Jews, Arabs and Israelis, in a very apolitical manner. Our aim is to build a community where people can communicate very openly with each other and create friendships – breaking bread, as we like to say. We’ve seen what’s happened on campus in the last year, and people’s day-to-day interactions with each other. Communities have been pulled apart – which is something both James and I noticed in our respective communities – and that’s why we wanted to bring people together.
James: The important thing is that we have to start with friendship, and with apolitical dialogue, in order to humanise intercommunal relations: not just one community seeing the other as a political tool for a certain cause.
Maryam: We’re not hoping to change the politics of what’s happening in the Middle East – that’s far beyond our reach. Our goal is to create change in Oxford, and mend those relationships here.
James: We’re doing this for the community, for all of those friendships which have been broken. We want to do the little bit that we can, and bring some healing.
What does The Empathy Project do?
James: We host events, geared towards achieving these aims. Our flagship event has been a dinner, where we bring together Muslim, Jewish, Arab and Israeli students for a three-course meal, with a focus on everything being as lovely as possible – especially the food. We stagger four or five questions throughout the meal – these are discussion questions for each table, geared towards inter-community cultural exchange, the feelings about each community, and the feelings of individuals about how they are personally impacted by the conflict. The important thing is that it remains apolitical: it’s all about personal feelings and discussions of each other’s communities and customs, and trying to get our members to understand each other’s culture. Our committee members act as facilitators to make sure everyone feels comfortable, and at the start of each dinner we outline the parameters of what this space is for – it is not a place for political discussion, discrimination, or prejudice. The welfare of our members is crucial to us: this is a space of healing. We’ve held two dinners so far, but we’ve got interest from students at other universities around the country who want to do the same thing, and we’ve had such good responses so far. A lot of our participants have expressed their surprise at how much they enjoyed the event.
Maryam: The feedback we’ve most commonly received has described participants initially feeling really anxious to attend the dinners, not quite knowing what to expect. Many students said that as soon as they walked in and saw everyone smiling and talking to each other, those fears dissipated, and they felt really welcome in this new community.
James: People were really friendly by the end! My biggest hope is that people have stayed in touch – we have a Whatsapp group chat to maintain this community, and that also allows people to message each other after the events, and we can share details of future events to really create a sense of community.
What made you want to start this project?
James: We became friends when we attended the same lecture, about a year ago now. We just started chatting, and then texting and facetiming over the long vacation, talking about music and each other’s cultures and languages. We figured that this sort of friendship must be quite rare at the moment – we both had friends who we’ve had difficulties interacting with. We just wanted to do our best to solve this. Initially we thought about doing a big formal, or trying to get the Islamic Society and Jewish Society to collaborate, but eventually we thought that if we create something ourselves it guarantees it as a neutral space. Neither of us are involved much with ISoc or JSoc, so this could be a new space without any tensions. It’s been hard to set up – we’re purely funded by our communities.
Maryam: A lot of our conversation was catalysed by the hurt and tension we’ve seen in our communities – I think that was what pushed us forward into this.
James: Yeah, exactly: the pain that politics has brought to both communities – the pain of what’s going on in the Middle East for all parties involved. The tension, the misunderstanding and dehumanisation of each other.
Tell me about how it got started!
James: It was kind of just us. We had two postgrads helping us initially –
Maryam: – from our respective communities –
James: – but it was really difficult for myself and Maryam trying to get this thing going, but we got really nice emails from people all over the world who’ve heard about it. People seeing it on newsletters have texted us, chaplains have emailed us – it’s been the best experience ever.
Maryam: People from back home have seen it on our social media as well.
James: Yeah, that’s been amazing – I have a friend at UCL who wants to start their own version, a visiting student wants to start their own one back at their college in the US.
Has anything in particular inspired this project?
James: I watched this amazing lecture by someone from The Rose Castle Foundation – a peacemaking NGO who have the ethos of ‘radical hospitality’, where they take people of different faiths and bring them together to build friendships outside of politics, so that they can go about the world in a more respectful manner. We were really inspired by that, and wanted a little piece of it in Oxford.
What have you learnt from the experience so far?
Maryam: I’ve definitely learnt that not everyone will be accepting of our ideas – this was a big challenge for me to face, especially when advertising what The Empathy Project is and what it stands for. But we’re optimistic that change is still possible: the more people hear about our events, I think ƒpeople will be open to joining.
James: We didn’t know what the market would be for this in Oxford – it’s sort of untested. When we first spoke to people about it, we realised that there are many people who are still not ready to interact with other communities. This upset us, but we had to start with the willing and build on that. There are so many obliging people who want to try this out: I think that shows that there is still empathy and willingness to try and understand each other. That’s the hope that we rely on.
Maryam: There’s a silent majority of people willing to connect. A small number of loud voices objected, but it’s just a matter of letting go of these expectations and stereotypes.
James: We had to learn to be content with the number of people coming to events. We had to understand that a lot of people don’t want to engage in dialogue, and that’s okay. This was always going to start small.
Maryam: And what started small as one dinner, turned into two, and now another event and a community which is still growing.
James: Our community is about 60 people: we’ve had about 40 – 50 come to events, and 20 – 30 more express interest. We’ve got 100 followers on Instagram – it’s still small, but mighty.
What are the broader plans for the future?
James: We kind of need to find students going into second year to continue our mission. I’ll be sad to leave our baby. We’ve also had other universities express interest, so we’re hoping to branch out, and also run more cultural events – especially explanatory events. It’s a lot easier now that we have a full committee.
Maryam: We’d like to do some speaker events, focusing on interfaith, inter-community relations, and peacemaking.
James: That’s what we’re aiming to branch out into, but also we just want to do more dinners. The biggest hurdle right now is funding.
Do you have a final message for The Oxford Blue’s readers?
James: Don’t underestimate the power of just sitting down at a table, enjoying good food, and having a conversation, because that can change a lot.
Maryam: As cliche as it sounds, a little empathy goes a long way. We’re so focused on the news, we’re so focused on cultural, religious, social biases – sometimes just letting go of them, just for a moment, just for dinner, can have such a powerful effect.
James: Just disconnect from things and see the people around you as a mutual human.
Maryam: Everyone’s been hurt by this situation. We need to acknowledge that it’s not just one person or one community who’s affected.
James: Yeah – it’s about acknowledgement, without letting it define the nature of every relationship. That’s what – eventually – will heal the relationships between our communities: through acknowledging each other, respecting each other, and focusing on what we have in common and what brings us together in these communities which share so much history and so much cultural material.
Maryam: We share so much interaction and intellectual history. Jews and Muslims worked together, researched together, translated the same texts into our respective languages.
James: We need to not forget about the past. We look forward to seeing this project grow.