http://nswas.org/spip.php?article826

In cooperation with the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College , the School for Peace at Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom expects soon to introduce a unique new M.A. program in Peace & Conflict Studies. The program will offer an unusual critical perspective on the reality of the Jewish-Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and provides tools for active engagement. The program will explicitly link theory and practice, integrate micro and macro, and bridge the individual, group, and community levels.

The curriculum is multidisciplinary, drawing on political science, history, social psychology and sociology. Experiential cross-cultural encounter and a practicum fieldwork segment round out the program. Students are to be trained as activists in the field of conflict and peace, to work in civil society as facilitators for groups in conflict or on the political and policy level. The students, lecturers and facilitators will be both Arab and Jewish, with balanced participation.

The Peace Studies Universe

Elsewhere, conflict resolution, management, intervention, and transformation programs do not focus exclusively on political conflicts but deal also with individual, family, legal, group, business, organization., etc. conflicts. They have a strong element of mediation-conciliation. In some of the courses there is also an emphasis on the use of conflict as an organizational tool or for social engineering.

Likewise, peace studies curricula in institutions of higher learning, whether in Israel and elsewhere, incorporate a tremendous variety of subject matter addressed from wildly varying orientations. The field covers a broad realm: From the very idealistic, normative programs with ecumenical religious and pacifist themes (mainly Christian, but also Buddhist, Muslim, Sufi, and Jewish), to programs that make no overt value judgments – accepting the existence of conflict and war and dealing with explications of their causes, forms, management and prevention. A program’s name may suggest the approach in which it is grounded. The overall approach then tends to shape which courses are included and the division between required and elective courses.

How the project was born

The School for Peace, which specializes in dialogue between groups in conflict and has developed a unique approach to working with such groups, has for nearly two decades run courses – in conjunction with Tel Aviv University – dealing with the Jewish-Arab conflict. Similar SFP-partnered courses are given at the Hebrew University, at Netanya Academic College , at the University of Haifa and at Ben-Gurion University. The SFP also conducts highly respected courses for professionals who facilitate inter-group encounters with Jews and Arabs in Israel, with Palestinians and Israelis, and with other groups in conflict. SFP graduates seed dozens of NGOs in Israel/Palestine with their informed activist approach.

This rich educational experience can, and should, be more fully mined for the pursuit of peace and justice. The SFP team therefore began exploring the feasibility of creating an activism-oriented master’s degree program in conjunction with an academic institutional partner. In the summer of 2007, the SFP began preliminary discussions with Prof. Nehemiah Friedland, President of the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College . He welcomed the idea and suggested further discussions with the College’s School of Government and Administration headed by Prof. Naomi Chazan. Next came a joint team comprising Prof. Naomi Chazan, Dr. Amal Jamal (head of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University), Prof. Avishai Ehrlich, Prof. Ariela Friedman (longtime SFP board member and TAU professor), and Dr. Nava Sonnenschein of the SFP. The team has met five times to formulate and elaborate the conceptual basis for the unique program proposed herein.

The college’s location, in downtown Jaffa, fits exceptionally well with the program’s goals. All the key issues addressed by the planned curriculum play out on a daily basis in the surrounding neighbourhoods of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, at the heart of the ongoing national conflict. While the classes, or some of them, will be given at WAS-NS, students will find valuable opportunities for practicum work in the immediate vicinity of the Jaffa campus. Constructive, incremental social changes initiated there can resonate productively on the national level and beyond.

Timetable

While the new M.A. degree program makes its way through the approval process at the Council on Higher Education (a process requiring up to two years), the SFP and the Tel Aviv – Yaffo Academic College will launch a one-year Certificate Program providing an excellent grounding along the same lines as the M.A. program. This Certificate program can begin as soon as there is funding – either in October 2008 (if a donor steps forward very soon) or else in spring 2009. Demand for both programs is expected to be high.