Pardee Students Visit Touro Synagogue
Students taking the Religion and American Foreign Policy class with James C. (Jim) Wallace, Lecturer in International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, took a recent trip to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, a site that holds significance for the history of both foreign policy and separation of church and state in America.
On February 28, 2016, nine students from Wallace’s class visited the Touro Synagogue to learn about the role it played at the intersection of foreign policy and separation of church and state in America.
George Washington visited the Touro Synagogue during his presidential campaign to secure support for the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Subsequent to his visit to Newport, Washington wrote his famous letter to the “Hebrew congregation in Newport,” in which he famously pledged that the then-fledgling nation would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Each year, Wallace takes his class to visit the Touro Synagogue to experience first-hand the site of Washington’s famous letter and to learn the history of the Touro Synagogue and the Jewish community in early America.
Students toured the Ambassador John Loeb Visitor’s Center which displays historical artifacts and history of the Jewish community in Newport, the synagogue, and the famous visit of George Washington. The group then received a guided tour and lecture of the synagogue itself, which has also been visited by several other U.S. Presidents.
Wallace said the students thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and that it helped put lessons learned in the classroom into the context of America’s foreign policy history.
“The unanimous opinion of the group was that it was a great experience and that it helped them put what they learned in class into the actual historical context,” Wallace said.