Back at the end of last January, yours truly asked on this blog about whatever had become of the so-called Dialogue Across Difference program?* Whenever the events surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict, and particularly its repercussions at UCLA, came up, the powers-that-be on campus have tended to refer to that program. See, we have Dialogue Across Difference! We're addressing the problem!
Former UC-president Drake gave money to the various UC campuses, including UCLA, to create such educational programming about the Middle East conflict. The Drake funds seemingly disappeared at UCLA into the Dialogue Across Difference program, although exactly what happened is unclear. But that particular funding isn't the real issue. You really don't need a lot of money to have programming on Israel-Gaza and the wider Middle East situation. As we have also pointed out in the past, Dartmouth created such programming shortly after the Hamas attack because it had faculty on campus who were willing to make it happened. (The powers-that-be at UCLA might be interested to know that Dartmouth received much positive national PR for its program. Actually, on second thought, I am sure that they do know.)
I can now tell you that UCLA actually DOES have a Dialogue Across Difference program (as opposed to just talking about having it).** But you might also be interested to know that it avoids touching on what would seem logically to be the major justification for it - with one notable exception which we will talk about below - namely, the Israel-Gaza conflict.
So, what does the program include, if not that?***
Well, for 2026, there is an upcoming event entitled "Speaking Across Conflict Workshop for Faculty and Staff" in which one will "delve deeper into a core skill for having more constructive conversations across charged political differences." I will unkindly put this program into the kumbaya category - let's all get along despite our differences. Put another kinder way, it's some kind of general conflict management training - but not about any specific conflict, i.e., not focused on The Conflict. So, we will all get along, but avoid specific discussion of what was causing us not to get along.
That event is followed by another entitled "The Politics of Migrant Scapegoating: A Conversation on Inclusion and Exclusion." I'm sure this is a worthy topic to discuss. But let's get real; there isn't a lot of migrant scapegoating going on at UCLA, even though it surely is occurring in the larger external polity.
Next on the agenda is "Speaking Across Conflict Workshop for Students," another non-specific kumbaya-type program. And it is followed by a similar one: "Speaking Across Conflict Workshop for Graduate Students."
The closest program in terms of possibly dealing with The Conflict is "An Interfaith Dialogue on Justice, Forgiveness, and Compassion." But when you read the actual description, it seems again to be generic kumbaya:
"In our deeply fractured world, religion serves both to connect and offer wisdom and to foster conflict and division. Over the course of centuries, it has been frequently invoked to justify brutal violence, but can it be an effective tool to advance justice? To explore different perspectives on the topic of faith, forgiveness, and justice, we will be joined by a distinguished panel of religious leaders: Father Greg Boyle, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Valarie Kaur, and Imam Dr. Jihad Turk..."
Let's put it this way. If there were to be a program about The Conflict, one might expect to see words in the titles or descriptions such as "Ottoman Empire," "British Mandate," "Balfour Declaration," "United Nations," etc., as well as the more obvious contemporary ones: Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, etc., as opposed to "faith, forgiveness, and justice."
The final program listed appears to be a repeat of the first: "Speaking Across Conflict Workshop for Faculty and Staff."
The programming described above will take place in the coming months of 2026. What about programs in the past? What did Dialogue Among Differences do in the spring of 2024? (Nothing is listed on the website that I could find for year 2025.) Apparently, however, in 2024, Dialogue Among Differences sponsored a series of Fiat Lux classes:
⦁ Bridget Callaghan (Psychology): Treat Yo’self: Examining Evidence Behind The Modern Self-Care Movement
⦁ Irene Chen (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering): Writing for Wikipedia: communicating science to a global audience
⦁ Lily Chen-Hafteck (Music): Cultivating Cultural Understanding and Intercultural Competency through Music
⦁ Linda Demer (Medicine): The Autism Spectrum and Neurodiversity
⦁ Vinay Lal (History): The Principles, Politics, and Poetics of Engaged Dialogue
⦁ Susanne Lohmann (Political Science): Radical Disagreement
⦁ Paul Macey (Nursing): Forget the Vaccine, Give Me Ivermectin! Dialogue around Disinformation
⦁ David Myers (History) and Carol Bakhos (Near Eastern): Keywords: How to Talk about Terms of Contention
⦁ Vadim Shneyder (Slavic): Language, Identity, and Power in the Post-Communist World
⦁ Sharon Traweek and Nadine Tanio (Gender Studies): Tasting the difference: Terroir, pleasure, and the politics of food and drink
⦁ Lee Ann Wang (Asian American Studies): Living with Violence Through Feminist Genealogies of Unknowing
Again, The Conflict is not mentioned. Might some of these courses have nonetheless included something about The Conflict? Maybe. Perhaps in the "Keywords" course, for example, there might have been a reference. But you'd never know it from their titles.
There was one notable exception to avoiding explicit mention of The Conflict: a discussion of Zionism that was posted as a video online on March 1, 2024 and presumably took place on or before that date.****
The important thing to be said about that particular event is that it did deal explicitly with The Conflict, so it is clearly possible at UCLA to do so. The topic wasn't then, and isn't now, too hot to handle. The two main presenters were not from UCLA. One was from Carleton University in Canada, a person of Jewish background who spoke Hebrew and had lived on an Israeli kibbutz at one point, and the other was a person of Palestinian heritage who taught at the University of the Pacific and who had advised the Palestinian delegation during the peace talks of 1999. Both presenters - although they had differences - had come nowadays to favor a "land for all" solution to The Conflict which seemed to mean a two-state confederation from which no one would be expelled, with an internal border, and with freedom of movement across the border. In short, a kind of Belgium.[1] The two presenters seemed to agree on more than they disagreed about. There was not a lot of difference in the dialogue that occurred.
Even so, the question is why weren't there other such programs as follow-ups, perhaps involving people with a broader range of viewpoints? Why are there no such events listed for 2026? Is it really the case that UCLA has no one on the faculty who could make knowledgeable comments on The Conflict? (If there isn't, that raises an important issue. But even were that true, with readily-available technology, knowledgeable people can be brought in remotely.)
To be clear, I'm not against kumbaya training. I'm not against discussing the various topics listed for the Fiat Lux courses. But I am against avoiding The Conflict as a major focus of Dialogue Among Difference. I hope that the lesson being taught in the various kumbaya events isn't that the best way to deal with a problem is to be in denial that it exists.
I puzzled over why - with the one 2024 exception - there is no scheduled discussion of The Conflict on the Dialogue Across Differences website, particularly after I read an op ed in the Daily Bruin about two conferences recently held at UCLA.***** One was a talk entitled "Revisiting Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination." The other was a second conference, created in response to the the first, entitled “Is Anti-Zionism Racism?” The two were held separately, so there was no Dialogue Among Difference involved, either in format or in actual sponsorship.
The author of the Daily Bruin op ed indicated that he had attended the first conference and found the presentation "forceful" but not sufficiently "nuanced." He says that he did not attend the second conference, but had "heard" tell that it was "superficial."
The op ed concludes with these words:
All too often, Zionists and anti-Zionists avoid asking the other what they mean when they use phrases such as “Israel as a Jewish state” or “from the river to the sea.” We must push past this constraint to foster a real, if difficult, exchange of ideas. Especially at this critical moment in the history of American higher education, we can and must do better.
Now here's the real puzzle. The author of the op ed is director of the UCLA Dialogue Across Difference program. Back in 2024, he did do the kind of event - he was the emcee - that he now complains isn't happening. If what is needed now is "a real, if difficult, exchange of ideas," he is the one in charge of doing it. But it isn't happening despite the fact that he is managing the programming.
If the powers-that-be at UCLA are serious about having an effective Dialogue Across Difference program, they should be asking how it can be that programming of the type that their own appointee says is very much needed, isn't listed on the schedule on a regular basis. In fact, at the moment, it isn't on the schedule at all. They might also consider whether someone who publicly critiques the content of a conference he did not attend in a Daily Bruin op ed is likely to want to have a dialogue with those whose views are contrary to his.
The alternative hypothesis is that the powers-that-be think that a "real, if difficult, exchange of ideas" is too much for UCLA to handle and that sticking with kumbaya training is the best we can do. I doubt that's the case. If I'm right, however, the Dialogue Across Difference program needs a change in direction. Either the current leadership changes course or there needs to be new leadership. The powers-that-be in Murphy Hall can make it happen - if they want to.
There are surely faculty on campus who have no personal stake and/or public position regarding The Conflict and who yet have expertise in such areas as history, politics, diplomacy, etc., to organize programming about it. That kind of neutral expert would likely be more open to a continuing set of events related to The Conflict with a broader range of viewpoints than were seen in the one 2024 event which the Dialogue Across Difference has held. And if we don't have such an expert, one could be and should be recruited.
As the Daily Bruin op ed concluded, "at this critical moment in the history of American higher education, we can and must do better." So here's a New Year's resolution for 2026: Let's move the Dialogue Among Difference program out of avoidance and denial. That would be a good place to start.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-notable-absence-of-dialogue-across.html.
**https://evcp.ucla.edu/priorities/dialogue-across-difference/.
***https://community.ucla.edu/program/dialogue-across-difference.
****https://vimeo.com/918557576/e75dd48558 or https://dn721903.ca.archive.org/0/items/a-laugh-a-tear-a-mitzvah/UCLA_dialogue_across_difference__zionism%20posted%203-1-2024.mp4.
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[1] Belgium is divided into a Dutch-speaking region and a French-speaking region with a common capital city, Brussels (also divided by neighborhood). But it is all under one flag and the country works out tensions between the two major groups through political means. "Belgium," I should note, is my characterization of what the two presenters seemed to think would be an ideal solution, not an example that the speakers cited. There was no discussion by the panelists as to how to get to a Belgium-type solution from where things are now.
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