School for Peace and the World Peace College Continued

A few people had asked me for more photos and details about where I am working, so here we go!

My corner office at the SFP

The School for Peace and the World Peace College are housed in the School for Peace Offices, which were constructed with donations from various friends associations in the US, UK and Europe. The SFP building houses several offices, a small kitchen area and a meeting room. We also have a lovely garden out-front where mint and fruit grows in case we need a snack or tea. 

The SFP is attachment to the Robert Nathan Wing. This hall provides extra classrooms and workshop spaces for the SFP which will also serve as lecture halls once the World Peace College gets underway. 

Exterior of the Robert Nathan Wing

Right now the UMassB program is being run out of the Robert Nathan Wing. One of the interesting things about some of the lecture halls is the addition of a two-way mirror that "connects" two classrooms. I didn't make the connection before, but I figured out it's purpose; for both conservative Ultra-Orthodox Jews and conservative Muslims, teaching both men and women in the same classroom goes against the custom, so the two-way mirror allows the SFP to accommodate this traditions. In addition, if there are participants who wish to remain anonymous, they can be on one side of the mirror. 

Two way mirror classroom

The Robert Nathan Wing main hall

If you walk out of the Robert Nathan Wing, there is another community garden that leads down towards the rest of the village.





To the East of the SFP is the primary school and kindergarten, which hosts the children of the village of NSWAS and children from the surrounding areas. Both Arabic and Hebrew are taught at the school, which is both an amazing opportunity and an immense challenge for the staff. 

Playground area of the NSWAS Primary School

To the South of the SFP is the Fred Segal Library. This amazing space is still under construction, but should be open to the public within the year. The Library will be the primary "institution" of the new college. It's two floors, with conferences rooms, offices, kitchens and business center.   

Exterior of the Library

The UMass-Boston program has started. There are currently twelve participants, making it a very personalized course. The staff at the SFP and the professor running the program were hoping for a much larger group of participants. Unfortunately do to time constraints and other scheduling and funding issues, this was the only time the class could be offered. 


There are elements of the class that I have encountered in other politics science, IR and sociology classes at Mount A, but this is the first time I have participated in a class specifically geared towards conflict prevention.

One of the other difficulties is the terminology used in conflict resolution and IR theory. Realism, liberalism, IR and political paradigms have been drilled into me since day one of my undergraduate degree, but conflict theory, game theory and IR paradigms are terms that many of the participants from Israel and Palestine has never heard of before, which has been a significant challenge to overcome. The language that we use in "the west" is pretty inaccessible in a different culture of academia. 

Life has returned to normal since the vandalism of last week. Several groups have come to the village to show solidarity with the community and life continues on...