Understanding the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Educational Responses

Educational Responses to the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Since early October 2023, a group of concerned colleagues has met regularly to plan education responses to events in Israel-Palestine. Before we could organize a first event, the group recognized that, given our participants' multiple perspectives and experiences of the conflict, we needed a set of common principles and shared parameters.

Building consensus within the group on our shared principles, approaches and goals enabled us to practice empathic listening, engagement with deeply held positions and some pains, as well as constructive problem solving to find common ground.

Our upcoming and past events deploy these principles to balance understanding of the conflict with empathy for how the conflict impacts all members of our community. We use this balance to open space for civil, respectful dialogue on difficult topics.

Upcoming Events

Bridging Divides: Understanding Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Event Details:

  • Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024
  • Time: 5:00- 6:30 p.m.
  • Location: Gerlinger Lounge
  • Audience: All UO community. Limited to the first 125 attendees. Priority given to UO students, who are encouraged to arrive early.

While most can agree that antisemitism and Islamophobia are harmful and divisive, in the current context of war in the Middle East it seems hard to agree on what they actually mean, what discourses and conduct they describe, and what we should do to try to combat them. Two leading scholars and public intellectuals, David Schraub (Lewis and Clark Law School) and Hussein Ibish (Arab Gulf States Institute, formerly American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee), will help us understand antisemitism and Islamophobia historically as well as in this complicated and confusing moment.

Featured Speakers:

Hussein Ibish Headshot
Hussein Ibish
Senior Resident Scholar, Arab Gulf States Institute
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a regular columnist for The National, The Atlantic and The Daily Beast. He has written numerous books and essays including his recent book What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal (ATFP, 2009). Ibish was included in all three years (2011, 2012, and 2013) of Foreign Policy’s “Twitterati 100,” the magazine’s list of 100 “must-follow” Twitter feeds on foreign policy. 

Ibish previously served as a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and executive director of the Foundation for Arab-American Leadership. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
David Schraub Headshot
David Schraub
Associate Professor of Law, Lewis and Clark Law School
David Schraub is an Associate Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School, teaching constitutional law and anti-discrimination law. He is a prolific writer on contemporary issues of racism and antisemitism. He is a lead drafter of the "Nexus" document on antisemitism, which parses antisemitism and discourse on Israel, and was referenced in President Biden's 2023 National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. In 2023, he co-convened the second annual Law vs. Antisemitism Conference, an international event which drew speakers from the US and abroad, culminating in a special issue in the Lewis & Clark Law Review. His most recent academic work explores dilemmas faced by university administrators regulating campus protests and other free speech controversies. David holds a BA from Carleton College, a JD from the University of Chicago Law School, and a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Workshop for Educators: Understanding and Addressing Antisemitism and Islamophobia, with Hussein Ibish and David Schraub

Event Details:

  • Date: Thursday, May 23, 2024
  • Time: 9:00-10:30 a.m. (optional breakfast at 8:30 a.m.)
  • Location: Lokey Education Building 276
  • Audience: All UO student-serving staff (faculty, GEs, Advisors); Capacity is limited to those who register

Register for Workshop

As educators, we care deeply about our students. The ongoing violence in the Middle East impacts members of our community in different ways, as do the long, complex histories surrounding antisemitism and Islamophobia. Many students are striving to articulate and act on their values, and to name the contexts and histories that feel meaningful. But many of us—educators and students alike—also have gaps in our understanding of multiple contexts of struggle and survival, and of the plurality of meanings in the language we use to speak about it all.

During this discussion, Hussein Ibish and David Schraub will share information to help us develop a more critical understanding of the forms antisemitism and Islamophobia typically take, including in our courses and on our campuses, and the impacts they have on students. We’ll have an opportunity to reflect on how our own histories shape our understanding of/reaction to antisemitic and Islamophobic statements and how we can stay grounded in empathy for students as they learn and act in a context that is fraught and contested. We’ll discuss promising practices for reducing antisemitism or Islamophobia and pre-plan least one way to address them in our own class contexts. We hope this event can help us better enact shared principles drafted by our colleagues, including that “We are best served by teaching complexity, by helping students understand the multiplicity of contexts and perspectives, and by modeling how to hold complexity with curiosity and empathy”

Do you have questions you’d like the speakers to address and/or accessibility needs? Let us know in our Qualtrics survey or by contacting tep@uoregon.edu.

This event is brought to you by the Division of Global Engagement and the Teaching Engagement Program.

These events are brought to you by the Division of Global Engagement. If your department or organization is interested in co-sponsoring these events, please contact Dennis Galvan.

Co-Sponsors: