The Impact of Jewish-Arab Intercultural and Educational Encounters

The goal of this paper is to describe and analyze the contribution of Jewish-Arab intercultural and educational encounters undertaken at two institutions of higher learning in the State of Israel, with relevance to perception change and relationship transformation. The first project was a pioneering course in Jewish-Arab Inter-religious Dialogue organized by the first author during the 2018-2019 academic year at Bar-Ilan University. The second is a research survey of the impact of joint Jewish Arab study in two academic courses at the Shaare Mishpat Academic College. Qualitative and quantitative data compiled from the first course once again corroborates the positive impact of the inter-religious educational encounter; the second study, quantitative in orientation, will be useful for assessing the impact of the contact hypothesis in the higher educational setting particularly against the background of divisive events such as the Trump Middle East Peace Plan.