Critical narratives Israel/Palestine, antisemitism and Islamophobia

Study Information Background and Aims Courses addressing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict confront a dual pedagogical challenge: conveying historical and political knowledge while engaging students with deeply contested narratives that are often emotionally charged and morally polarized (Bar-Tal, 2007; Halperin & Bar-Tal, 2011). Prior research suggests that exposure to multivocal historical narratives can foster greater narrative complexity, empathy, and openness toward outgroup perspectives (e.g., Sagy, Adwan, & Kaplan, 2002; Bar-On & Kassem, 2004; Salomon, 2004), yet these effects are neither automatic nor uniform across students. Pre-existing prejudicial attitudes may shape how students engage with, resist, or integrate competing narratives. Pedagogical scholarship increasingly emphasizes experiential and dialogical learning, arguing that meaningful learning in conflict contexts involves not only cognitive acquisition but also emotional engagement and reflexive meaning-making (Ben David et al., 2017). However, relatively little empirical research has examined how such learning unfolds over the course of a semester-long undergraduate course, or how baseline intergroup attitudes condition learning outcomes. The present study evaluates the outcomes of a semester-long undergraduate course on Modern Israel that explicitly presents complex, multivocal Israeli and Palestinian narratives. The study focuses on two interrelated aims: To assess whether participation in the course increases students’ narrative legitimacy and narrative complexity with respect to both Israeli and Palestinian narratives. To examine whether baseline antisemitism and Islamophobia moderate students’ capacity to develop narrative legitimacy and complexity over the course of the semester. Theoretical Argument Narrative approaches to conflict emphasize that individuals do not merely hold opinions about political events but interpret them through narrative frameworks that organize moral judgment, emotional response, and group identification (Bar Tal, 2013; Hammack, 2008). Exposure to competing narratives can expand narrative complexity by enabling individuals to recognize the legitimacy of multiple historical experiences and moral claims, even when these narratives are in tension (Adwan et al., 2016; Salomon, 2004). At the same time, social-psychological research on prejudice suggests that pre-existing negative attitudes toward social groups shape information processing, emotional openness, and resistance to counter-stereotypical perspectives (Stephan & Stephan, 2000; Fiske, 2015). Antisemitism and Islamophobia, in particular, function not only as attitudinal dispositions but as interpretive lenses that may constrain students’ willingness or ability to engage empathically with narratives associated with stigmatized groups (Allington, Hirsh, & Katz, 2022; Lee et al., 2009). We therefore argue that while the course is expected to promote greater narrative legitimacy and complexity overall, students’ levels of antisemitism and Islamophobia will condition the magnitude of this learning effect. Moreover, because these prejudices are asymmetrically tied to specific narratives, we expect antisemitism to be particularly consequential for engagement with Israeli narratives, and Islamophobia to be particularly consequential for engagement with Palestinian narratives.