Facilitating Arab-Jewish intergroup dialogue in the college setting

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an especially entrenched ethno-national stalemate. The upsurges of violence in the Middle East provide flashpoints for tension among Arabs, Jews and other students on college campuses. The author presents methods for facilitating dialogue between these groups in the form of a psychologically informed, educational case study. A short, university-level course helped students from different cultural backgrounds deepen their understanding of this complex conflict in the context of learning about Jewish- and Arab-Americans. The instructors used an intergroup dialogue model of pedagogy enabling students to engage with each other in a setting that allow affect and conflict to emerge safely. Students developed greater understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by hearing 'the other side' and attributed learning primarily to their peers. The author provides several recommendations for replicating this course or conducting similar interventions.