Higher Education And Regional Integration In The Arab World (Op-Ed)

One reason that reconciliation and peace in the Middle East have remained elusive is the fact that Arab educational institutions at all levels have not taught about them. With the dominant norm resonant in the region’s infospheres consisting of multiple layers of violence and counterviolence, the values of reconciliation and peace have never become part of the social and political fabric of the Arab world. Thus, preparing educators and experts in this field must become an essential ingredient in paving the way to a future of conflict resolution, moderation, reconciliation, tolerance, and peace. In some respects, it is a precondition for breaking the dark spiral of insecurity, violence, and war.

My own intellectual journey personally attests to this truth. I was once an unawares prisoner of one-sided narratives populated by well-practiced stereotypes. But I have long cooperated with Israeli colleagues, and even led Palestinians students on a field trip to Auschwitz. 

I have learned a lot in my journey, which has now stretched out for more than 25 years. But above all I have learned to have hope for the future. It is therefore time for me to take the next step: I seek help to create a region-wide Graduate Program for Reconciliation and Peace. 

Not a single university in the Arab region offers a Ph.D. program on peace, moderation, interfaith dialogue, and reconciliation studies. This must change. We must build new institutions to promote a culture of peace, tolerance, and coexistence. Moderation and reconciliation are essential ingredients for positive social change and the prevention of violence and conflict recurrence both within and among countries. 

We must learn not only how to be effective in post-conflict phases, but also how to be effective even in the midst of conflict. This is easier than it may sound, for it is when people are hurting most that they are often most receptive to other ways of thinking and acting.

Such a program, which would grant doctorates in peace, conflict resolution, and reconciliation studies, would respond to a growing demand for academic skills knowledge and professional training that address the complex issues of building a new society based on critical thinking and creative innovation. Its curriculum must include interdisciplinary studies related to peace, moderation, conflict resolution, justice, interreligious understanding, dialogue, empathy, and tolerance. It would consist of six basic, integrated parts: teaching, training, research, library, publications and outreach, and continuing education.

The target group for this three-year Ph.D. program would be qualified students from different disciplines from various areas of the Arab world interested in learning how to achieve economic vitality and political moderation for their societies.  These students would become heralds of cooperation, understanding, and open-mindedness facilitating a healthy environment free of enmity, bigotry, racism, and hatred.

Graduates would have powerful multiplier effects as they become their countries’ next generation of newspapers editors, radio and TV program designers, university teachers, feature writers, bloggers, and even national leaders. The Program would also be open to augment the skills of professionals in medicine, law, engineering, education, and other fields, so that such leaders can carry the Program’s mission with them as well.

To the extent the Program is successful and builds on its own achievement to scale-up to maximum influence, the region as a whole will benefit. The network of graduates will become more than the sum of its individual national parts, contributing to a better society for all. The Graduate fellows will constitute the core of pan-Arab educational reformists who will spend their careers promoting reformed educational curriculum and advanced regional cultural integration.

Peace is too important to be left to generals, diplomats, and politicians. People who suffer from conflict must be part of the solution to it if that solution is to be just and enduring. 

As is well known, a characteristic artistic motif in the Arab world involves something, appropriately enough, called an arabesque. An arabesque is just an interesting non-iconographic shape that, by itself, is not much use to anyone. But if a skilled artisan puts enough of these individual small shapes together, there is no limit to how beautiful and serviceable the result can be. 

That, let me suggest, is the metaphor to keep in mind for a Graduate Program for Reconciliation and Peace. Each graduate will be one piece, one part, of a growing structure of beauty and strength that will bend the hearts of all who experience it toward the light, and toward doing what is right. So let us get busy building that structure. We have a lot of work to do.

Mohammed Dajani is the founder of the Wasatia movement and director of the Wasatia Graduate Academic Institute. This article, adapted from his presentation at the Arab Council's inaugural conference, first appeared in the pages of Die Welt.