This is the second in a two-part post by BILT Student Fellow Ethel Ng. Read the first part here.
Recap of Part One
Part One included a backdrop to conflict transformation, social justice education, & social identity theory.
I established intentions to evaluate the extent to which education can transform society for more just ends, through assessing the Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine (BBIP) programme as a site of hope that holds the potential for positive change, transformation, and resistance against oppressive systems. BBIP’s interwoven critical pedagogies will be explored through the lens of Paulo Freire and bell hooks’ scholarship on pedagogies of hope and education as a practice of freedom (hooks, 1994; Freire, 2000, 2004).
Part Two will take you through:
- a programme description of BBIP;
- and an overall evaluation of BBIP.
I end with the sentiment that the BBIP programme is a radical space of possibility (hooks, 1994), one we can replicate within the wider field of conflict transformation.
Part Two
PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION OF BBIP
Organised by the Centre for Global Education at USF, BBIP gives students the opportunity to intentionally engage with the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through a curated combination of travel, presentations, workshops, and group process (daily critical thought exercises and self-reflection). Partnered with the Centre for Transformative Education (a non-profit organisation that educates and empowers students to mobilise their communities for more just ends), it is open to university students of all backgrounds who are interested in topics and disciplines relevant to Israel-Palestine, social justice, conflict transformation, and international relations. Previous cohorts have been racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse, with varying prior knowledge about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and a range of experience surrounding international travel and cross-cultural immersion. BBIP educators have similarly differed in identities, some Palestinian, some Jewish American, and some Jewish Israeli (Tapper & Kroll-Zeldin, 2015). By BBIP prioritising diverse and inclusive classrooms, it is established that ‘our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence’ (hooks, 1994)
The three-week programme provides a space for both rigorous academics and practical, experiential learning (as a study-abroad immersion programme with its hostel based in Palestinian East Jerusalem), involving visits to various cultural, historical, religious, and political sites throughout Palestine and Israel, receiving tours and lectures from activists, scholars, and NGOs (Lassner et al., 2019). Visiting everything from Jewish Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, to swimming in the Mediterranean and Dead Seas and meeting a politician in the Palestinian National Authority, students learn to draw from the varied experiences of those who live the Palestinian-Israeli conflict every day. Workshops are also fundamental to the programme. Led by BBIP educators, they dissect local history, conflict transformation theories, and key themes of the international conflict. Students are also taught comparative conflict analysis, exploring questions at the core of all conflicts, going beyond Israel and Palestine. Lastly, facilitated group process dialogues round off each evening, after which the students are encouraged to explore Jerusalem’s nightlife – providing the chance to learn from and immerse themselves in the unplanned as well as planned activities. An approach that would be approved by hooks (2000), BBIP offers the space for spontaneity with unique and unpredictable catalysts for learning.
Evaluation of BBIP
Overall, BBIP targets both personal and collective growth, engaging students to reflect on the roles that they and their identities play in international conflicts, even as supposed ‘third parties’, and what this means for their political identities. ‘Beyond Bridges’ and mere peace agreements, BBIP aims to challenge students to conceptualise potential longer-term solutions that explore transforming societies and ending inter-communal conflicts (Tapper & Kroll-Zeldin, 2015). I argue through Freire (2000) that BBIP is a powerful site of hope that provides a rare transformative learning experience, empowering a diverse cohort of students through open dialogue. BBIP fosters critical thinking, the ability to question authority, a sense of social responsibility to apply reflections and knowledge to real-world issues, and a yearning to contribute actively to their own learning.
Immersion programmes in Israel and Palestine tend to focus exclusively on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. BBIP is unique in its comparative approach where the conflict is used as more of an entry-point into re-examining and de-exceptionalising conflicts across the globe. Using study groups, BBIP also engages not just with Palestinian and Israeli academic texts, speakers, and sites, but also treats each student as a living text themselves – providing a space for students to analyse their social identities in relation to the wider world. Rooted in experiential education, a distinctiveness of BBIP is also derived from the conflict being studied on-site by students in partnership with local Palestinians and Jewish Israelis (Tapper & Kroll-Zeldin, 2015).
Deliberately exposed to individuals from all across the political, cultural, and social spectrum, students are presented with multiple narratives, communal truths, and political ideologies within the three-week timeframe. A difficult bias to overcome, it is also true that BBIP is limited by this timeframe, in that only so much can be guaranteed for students to experience. However, I argue that the way BBIP have meticulously scheduled and varied the timetabled events over the allotted period allows for sufficient exposure to differing opinions; students are still able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each proposed political resolution to the conflict, and formulate their own opinions through experiential learning, facilitated dialogue, and critical reflection.
BBIP is an exemplar of Freire’s (2000) pedagogy of critical social justice education in how it recalls that the personal is political and the political is personal. Students are taught the Freirean (2000) idea that it is impossible to separate politics and identity from the context of learning; in other words, they quickly grasp that their social identities directly influence how they experience what they learn. I appreciate this being similarly internalised by the BBIP educators, cultivating an atmosphere whereby everyone is simultaneously teachers and students (Freire, 2000). hooks (1994) asserts that the classroom is not to be a space for domination, and that teachers should have the goal of self-actualisation just as much as the students do (Specia & Osman, 2015). Journeying with the students, engaging in a deeply reflexive process during the immersion, shunning ‘objectivity’ or ‘neutrality’ in their own understandings, experiences, and teachings of the conflict, BBIP educators are also expected to critically reflect on their identity markers and how they might connect to wider privileges, oppressions, and potential for social justice. This is what hooks (1994) would call engaged pedagogy – ‘in many ways, I continue to teach them, as they become more capable of teaching me’.
BBIP’s core strength is in its group process. Students engage daily in facilitated sessions that prompt reflection on their backgrounds, the ways in which they were socialised, and systems of knowledge production (Tapper & Kroll-Zeldin, 2015). It provides a much-needed structured, intentional space for self-understanding, to interact with fellow students, and to safely articulate experiences surrounding contentious issues. Freire (2000), hooks (1994) and Darder (2020) all talk about the sanctity of dialogue between students and with educators, the pedagogy of the question (Brass & Macedo, 1985), the process of problematisation, and tangible action – coined praxis. Freire (2000) writes, ‘without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education’ – his pedagogic scholarship aligns with how BBIP’s dialogic encounters in group process sessions encourages critical thinking regarding their Israel and Palestine immersion, which in turns aids the development of critical consciousness. The BBIP programme calls things into question via ‘problem-posing’ rather than a ‘problem-solving’ approach, and openly acknowledges that it aims to complicate students’ understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and to leave them with more questions than answers (Silwadi & Mayo, 2014). Instead of socialising them with a particular point of view, critical thinking skills are sharpened, and knowledge is co-investigated by both the educator and learner together (Freire, 1998). Group process essentially practices education as a form of liberatory politics. As articulated by Freire (1985) through conscientization, students recognise the world ‘not as a ‘given’ world, but as a world dynamically ‘in the making’’.
As with any social justice programme adjacent to BBIP, one of the largest challenges is translating critical reflection into meaningful action once the three-weeks are up, and students return to the comfort of their university classrooms. Having undergone such a transformational experience, so deeply immersed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, returning to normality often comes with difficulty adequately articulating what they experienced to others. Tapper & Kroll-Zeldin (2015) also caution against students taking on too much personal responsibility to single-handedly educate their communities about the conflict. To combat this, BBIP integrates a segment of the programme to covering activist burnout and compassion fatigue. Students are continuously reminded of Freire’s (2000, 2004) insistence on working with communities and building alliances to make social justice possible – after all, ‘human beings in communion liberate each other’.
Conclusion
hooks (1994) maintains that ‘the classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility’, ‘the most radical space of possibility’. Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine demonstrates that education can evolve to address differing, non-hegemonic social realities. In the choice between domesticating and liberating education, BBIP chooses liberation – education as a practice of freedom (Freire, 2000). Ultimately, BBIP is not about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is about developing students’ critical thought and self-reflection, and praxis of both teachers and students alike. It shines a spotlight on the ways in which social inequalities take hold globally, and the importance of getting to know one another – culturally, ethnically, personally, politically, religiously – through an exploration (instead of avoidance) of social identities. At its most successful, educational programmes like BBIP empower students to return to their local communities, armed with local solutions, bolstered by local alliances, to create positive change and transform society for more just ends.
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