Focus on New Courses
The Swiss Center takes pride in its continuiously innovative academic program, which we regularly update in order to reflect the rapid pace of change in our world and in the field of conflict resolution. Here we highlight a new course that was introduced into our curriculum this past year.
Reporting News in Conflict Zones, Training and Practice
Dr. Ibrahim Hazboun
The course provides behavioral and practical training on the role of journalists covering conflicts and wars as well as training to write news reports. The course deals with the ways journalists cover news in conflict zones and provide basic training in building news stories from lead through their close. The purpose of the workshop course is to enrich the knowledge and deepen students' understanding and skills needed to act, originate, research, focus and craft clear accounts of news in conflict zones. Students can write their assignments in Hebrew, Arabic or English.
Diplomacy in Practice: Simulating Middle East Diplomacy and Negotiations
Dr. Lior Lehrs
The course explores the practical aspects of the diplomatic arena within the context of conflict and peace in the Middle East, with the goal of equipping students with knowledge and skills and simulating role-playing of a diplomatic conference. Throughout the course, we will discuss key issues, central terms, common diplomatic practices, and significant documents (UN resolutions, initiatives, agreements) related to the diplomatic landscape surrounding the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The course examines the main players in the arena (domestic, regional, and international), their interests, and positions, while also addressing real-time developments. At the heart of the course, a simulation exercise will take place, replicating a diplomatic conference in the Middle East. During this simulation, students will play different roles, allowing them to closely engage with the dynamics and practices of Middle Eastern diplomacy and to apply the acquired tools from the course.
Between conflict and dialogue: an active journey through Jerusalem
Ms. Keren Winter-Dinur
Israeli society maintains several cleavages and internal conflicts, expressed among different groups of society and at varying intensity levels. Jerusalem is a fascinating microcosmos of those conflicts and the dialogue attempts to resolve them; they are manifested uniquely in its neighborhoods and dynamics throughout the city. This is an exciting course in that it is a traveling and active course. It combines classroom sessions of theoretical study on internal conflicts and their resolution with several tours following some of the main conflicts the state of Israel is troubled by. The course will bring the students together in the field with experts on the various issues, social activists, and the people who stand at the center of those conflicts and their reconciliation attempts in Jerusalem.
Conflict - reality, culture and fiction
Dr. Yuval Benziman
The course will deal with different conflicts in Israeli society and how they are presented in its culture (mainly: cinema and TV series). We will analyze texts that focus on conflicts and compare their representation of the conflict, to the way it is framed in Israeli public discourse and academic research. In each class we will read/view a culture text alongside a reading of studies dealing with Israeli society and/or Israeli culture. In the final classes of the semester, each student will be asked to choose a text that we have not discussed in class, and present it in the context of theories related to conflict research, culture and sociology.