Approaches to Teaching Israel–Palestine

This hour-long conversation helped teachers, at the K–12 and college levels, develop strategies to teach the Palestine–Israel conflict, and many of the attendant sensitive historical topics it entails, in an atmosphere as charged as the present. It might seem that this history is a minefield worth avoiding, but thoughtful and engaged teachers have been teaching such difficult topics in a civil and empathetic way for decades. A panel of historians with relevant expertise discussed classroom strategies and how current events have influenced their approach to teaching, as well as how understanding history and engaging seriously with people who inhabited the past can help our students to better understand current events.

Read about the event in Perspectives on History.

Panelists

• Moderator: James Ryan, director of research, Foreign Policy Research Inst.
• Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar professor of holocaust and genocide studies, Brown Univ.
• Michelle Campos, associate professor of Jewish studies and history, Penn State Univ.
• Katharina Matro, teacher, Walter Johnson High School and AHA
• Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair, Univ. of California, Berkeley