Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine

israel palestine flags

Program Info

**As of 11.12.19, the Program Fee and flight costs have not yet been solidified. This info. will be concretized shortly.

Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine is a summer program that takes university students to the Middle East on a journey of comparative conflict analysis and conflict transformation, combining rigorous academics and practical hands-on training with the intent to explore questions at the core of all conflicts.

Through this process, Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine aims to create spaces for both personal and collective growth, helping students gain new understandings of the role they play in international conflicts and how this relates to their political identities. Moving beyond the stage of practical peace agreements or "building bridges," we challenge participants to look at long-term solutions to end the inter-communal conflict.

This program is extraordinary in several ways:

  • Comparative Approach. We utilize the Israeli- Palestinian conflict as an entry point into re-examining and de-exceptionalizing conflicts around the world, such as the conflicts in the Balkans and Northern Ireland.
  • Study Group. We consider each participant to embody particular social identities. As such, we not only engage with Palestinian and Israeli sites, speakers and presentations, and academic texts but also have students study themselves and their location in the world.
  • Experiential Education. We travel in Israel and Palestine, exploring this conflict region with local scholars, religious and political leaders, and activists. This gives participants insights and opportunities one cannot get from books alone.