Perspective Chapter: Visible or Invisible? Arab Students in the Israeli Academic World

Abstract

Multicultural environments in academic institutions face major challenges in teaching, learning, and social integration. Although the number of Arab students attending institutions of higher education in Israel has increased, the Arabic language has little presence in the Israeli academic world. This article explores the results of teaching Arab students in their language. Can it have a positive influence on their feelings of belonging and can it enable them to integrate more successfully in academic settings? teaching in Arabic alongside Hebrew in Israeli academia enhanced feelings of belonging in Arab students. They developed a sense of belonging to their institution and their integration grew.

1. Introduction

Multicultural environments in academic institutions face major challenges in teaching, learning, and social integration. Although the number of Arab students attending institutions of higher education in Israel has increased, the Arabic language has little presence in the Israeli academic world.

The language of every society reflects, and molds, that society and is part of its sociopolitical reality. In recent years, the place of the Arabic language in Israel has become a subject that is being increasingly debated. While, on the one hand, attempts are being made by certain groups and individuals in Israel to undermine its official status in the country, attempts are also being made by other groups and individuals to draw attention to Arabic’s importance as an integral part of the national fabric. For example, over twenty years ago, the Israeli Supreme Court, in its capacity as the country’s High Court of Justice, stated in one of its rulings: “The uniqueness of the Arabic language in Israel is twofold. First of all, Arabic is the language of a large minority group that has lived in this country for generations. It is the language of the country’s Arab citizens who, despite the Arab-Israeli conflict, want to live in Israel as citizens with equal rights whose language and culture are respected. Second, Arabic is one of Israel’s two official languages. Although a wide variety of languages are spoken in Israel, Arabic alone, along with Hebrew, is an official language in this country” (High Court of Justice file no. 1999/4112).

2. The Palestinian Arab population in the State of Israel

On December 31, 2021, the total population of Israel was 9.449 million, of which 6.982 million were Jews (73.9 percent of the total), 1.995 million were Arabs (21.1 percent of the total), and 472,000 (5.0 percent of the total) were classified under the category of “Others.”

There are today 58,000 college and university students in Israel who are members of the country’s Arab community and who attend Israel’s universities and academic colleges. They constitute 17 percent of Israel’s total student population, although Israel’s Arab citizens constitute 21 percent of the total population. The number of Arab college students represents a 122 percent increase from 2010.

The cultural and linguistic background of the students attending institutions of higher learning in Israel is diverse. Egalitarian pedagogy cannot exist unless the educational institution ensures the presence of the languages and cultures of its students in their particular academic settings. The ensuring of such a linguistic and cultural presence must be expressed in each educational institution’s academic vision and must be implemented in an orderly manner by the teaching staff and the administration. In their respective classrooms, the members of the academic staff must teach in their students’ particular language and must encourage their students to become familiar with their language and culture. The educational institution’s administration should encourage both instructors and students to participate in workshops designed to familiarize them with the students’ language and culture.

The encounters between Arabs and Jews in the academic world take place by means of language. In the context of these encounters, a dialog is engaged in, and in this dialog, individual students can express themselves through the words that they themselves choose. The question that must be asked here is whether the space for self-expression assigned in academia to Jewish students is similar to the space for self-expression assigned to Arab students. Some Arab students are on the seam between full expression of their identity and a relinquishing of such full self-expression through the employment of a language that is not their native tongue, namely, Hebrew [1]. This relinquishing is acceded to for the sake of interaction, dialog, and collaboration [2]. If we accept the assumption that language represents identity, we can understand the immense importance that must be attached to the legitimization of Arabic in addition to Hebrew in the academic sphere.

3. Israel’s higher education system: An overview

Institutions of higher learning are very important social agencies for many reasons. They are a central site for the creation of knowledge and for the molding of dialog. In addition to serving as a moral and ethical symbol, they are an important station along the route of the student’s development: For many young people, an institution of higher learning helps introduce them to the working world, is a mechanism of socialization, is an important meeting place for diverse social groups, and is a hothouse for the cultivation of social, economic, and political leaders. Thus, it can be said that Israel’s system of higher education is crucially important: It helps shape society and teaches students how to cope with the social gaps and political discrimination that exist in Israel.

Institutions of higher education in Israel have a special moral responsibility toward the country’s Palestinian Arab citizens, because they played a pivotal role in the formation of the ideology that has had such a major impact on these citizens, including, of course, Palestinian Arab students.

It should be noted here that social segregation exists in the common spaces on campus and that there is invisible interracial competition in Israel’s institutions of higher learning [3].

Social activities on campus represent, and are directed toward, students who are members of the majority group, and students who are members of minority groups sense that they are not part of, and do not derive any substantial benefit from, those social activities. As a result, minority group students are sometimes angry and frustrated and have a sense of powerlessness; these sentiments lead them to feel alienated, to feel that they are strangers on their own campus [4].

Often, the minority group’s culture is ignored in the social expanse on campus. “White culture” is regarded as everyone’s culture and therefore negates any need for the presence of any additional cultures. The curricula in “white-culture-dominated” settings place special emphasis on male, heterosexual, and white perspectives, ignoring the contribution of other cultural groups. From the visual standpoint, the multiculturalism that exists on campus emphasizes the dominant position of “white culture.” Thus, for example, in America, some academic institutions give priority to their white students and exclude blacks [5]. The buildings on campus “inform” all those who enter them whether they belong or are even welcome and whether their cultural knowledge and cultural background are relevant [6]. There is a connection between ethnicity and budget levels, which express themselves in the quality of a campus building’s structure. In California, white middle-class students study in new buildings, while the buildings where white working-class and black students attend classes are older. The sense of belonging to their campus that is felt by students who are members of minority groups is undermined when cultural “signs” on campus represent only the dominant culture [7]. The feeling of superiority expressed toward Hispanic culture on American college campuses creates complex dilemmas [8].

Many research studies represent Israel as a country in which ethnic origin carries much weight, as can be seen in all spheres of life in Israel. Israeli democracy is republican in nature, and there are two categories of citizenship in Israel: republican citizenship for Jews and liberal citizenship for Palestinian Arabs. However, only Israeli Jews can realize their citizenship by participating in the joint social good [9]. Academic space is not a nationalized ceiling in that sense, and the paradigms and vitality of the members of the dominant national group are heavily invested in the organizational space of academia and define that organizational space [10].

Israel’s institutions of higher education are not disconnected from the broad social context in which they are anchored. The conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs beyond the perimeters of college campuses is replicated on Israeli college campuses and impacts the relations between Jewish and Palestinian Arab students as well as the relations between Palestinian Arab students and the administrative and academic staff members of these colleges and universities, most of whom are Jews [11].

The place of Arabic in Israel in general and in Israeli academia in particular is an important subject for research study and for discussion in academic and judicial contexts. Linguistic rights are collective rights in addition to being cultural rights; furthermore, they can be compared with the right to religious freedom. In contrast with the narrow judicial approach that grants Arabic only instrumental status, the State of Israel must provide broad support to the languages of its minority groups and must make those languages present in the country’s public spaces and in the lives of the members of Israel’s majority group. Neglect of the language of the country’s minority groups and prioritization of the language of the majority group could cause serious damage to the cultural identity of the minority groups [12]. Arabic plays an important role in the lives of Palestinian Arab college students; it has a symbolic dimension for all Palestinian Arabs [13].

Palestinian Arab students have no Arab institution of higher learning budgeted for any Arab community in Israel. Apparently fearing political repercussions, Israel has decided against the opening of an Arab University in Israel. Recently, Tel Hai Academic College has been recognized as a university; in establishing Tel Hai University, Israel has dramatically increased the number of Jewish universities in the country; as a result of this move, the language, the culture, and the identity of Palestinian Arab students cannot develop, cannot be enriched, and cannot occupy a dignified place in Israeli society.

4. Arabic and Arab culture in Israeli universities

4.1 The adjustment problems of Arab students

The encounter between Arab and Jewish students in Israel’s colleges and universities can be at times emotionally charged because of the cultural and national differences between the country’s Arab and Jewish populations. For Arab students, the first year of college or university studies can be especially traumatic because these students are dramatically brought face-to-face with the sociocultural differences between these two populations. The vast majority of Arab college and university students in one research study noted that they had to invest much more time and energy than their Jewish counterparts in order to achieve progress in their studies. In comparison with the Jewish students, over 50 percent of these Arab students found it much more difficult to meet the demands of their academic courses, and on the whole, Arab students had more adjustment problems. Because of these difficulties, many Arab students in their first year change their study majors or abandon their studies altogether. Another problem is connected with language: Arab students find it difficult to read academic material in languages with which they are not so familiar, namely, Hebrew and English. The principal obstacles hindering the social and academic integration of Arab students are the teaching methods, which demand independent study, and academia’s open, liberal atmosphere [14].

The educational gap between Arab and Jewish students stems from the gap between the country’s Arab and Jewish education systems at the elementary, junior high, and secondary school levels. Furthermore, the fact that all of Israel’s universities are Jewish hinders the sociocultural integration of Arab students in the country’s institutions of higher learning.

The degree of knowledge of Hebrew has a major impact on scholastic achievement, particularly in the Arab student’s first year on campus. What can be done about this issue? One very effective solution would be to give Arabic a strong presence as a language of study, especially in the first year of college/university studies.

4.2 The integration of Arab students in Israeli academia: Social aspects

The unique characteristics of Arab society in Israel strongly influence the ability of Arab students to integrate into Israeli academia, their aspirations for scholastic excellence, their social expectations before and during their studies, and their scholastic achievements. The impact of the students’ social environment on their scholastic aspirations can be seen in the fact that when they arrive at university, they form a minority group on campus and must face the challenge of dealing with a new culture and with the majority group in their institution of higher learning [15].

Regarding the majority-minority relationship and the Palestinian-Israeli dispute and their influence on the integration of Arab students in their respective college or university, it must first be noted that the most significant characteristic of Israeli society that impacts the country’s Arab minority and the integration of Arab students in Israel’s academic world is the fact that Israel is still entangled in a national conflict. The conflict impacts the scholastic achievements of Arab students and the nature of the country’s school system, which is split into a Jewish education system and an Arab one [16].

In the relevant professional literature, there is considerable discussion of a country’s education system as an effective tool for enabling the country to control its minority groups [17]. In the case of Israel, the use of the education system to control the country’s Arab minority preserves that group’s social, economic, political, and cultural inferiority through the establishment of educational goals that are not suited to the Arab population, thereby promoting the discrimination of the Arab education system in terms of resources, programs, and services.

The language-related challenges facing Arab students in Israeli academia include difficulties in understanding the lectures in Hebrew, an insufficiently rich vocabulary in Hebrew, the constant need for translations, difficulties in writing papers in Hebrew, and the lack of self-confidence and the awkwardness that Arab students invariably experience when they must express themselves in a language that is not their mother tongue.

In the past decade, the place of Arabic in Israel has been widely discussed. While, on the one hand, there have been attempts to undermine the official status of Arabic in Israel and to fortify the status of Hebrew as the country’s sole official language; many people are advocating the increased presence of Arabic in Israel’s academic world in order to make it easier for Arab students to adjust to that world, especially in their first year of academic studies.

Intercultural encounters in the academic sphere create an opportunity—sometimes the first opportunity—to turn university education into a positive experience. In order to promote such opportunities, Arabic and Arab culture should become far more prominent on Israeli college and university campuses, especially because, as noted above, colleges and universities are invaluable and highly influential social institutions and are vitally important in the molding of the society of which Arab students, like their Jewish counterparts, are an integral part.

Many research studies have shown that students who are members of minority societies tend to feel, during their period of postsecondary studies, that they are, as it were, living in a besieged city and that they are not welcome in their academic setting [18, 19]. From these studies, it can be concluded that in many respects, academic institutions are custom-tailored to meet the needs of the students who belong to the country’s dominant group and that the absence of the language and culture of the Other creates an unfriendly, cold climate for those students who are not members of the dominant group [20].

The concept of the “cold climate” first appeared in the research study of Hall and Sandler (1984) [21], who wanted to understand the nature of the various obstacles in the academic world. The term “climate” refers to the attitudes, approaches, and emotions in a given setting [22]. It can be said that the term also expresses a complex organizational phenomenon whose features are replicated in the conduct of the persons in the organization. The assessment of an academic institution’s climate can provide decision-makers with a better understanding of the manner in which the campus is experienced by various groups of students [23]. Such an understanding is essential because the climate impacts the scholastic achievements of the members of minority groups on college and university campuses [19].

The question that one must ask is: “To what extent does the climate on college and university campuses in Israel meet the needs of Arab students from the standpoints of language and culture?” In order to answer that question, one must review what is being done on college and university campuses in other countries that are dealing with the problems of students from minority groups in the academic world. The most prominent research studies focusing on similar issues are those that have been conducted in America and that are concerned with questions such as the structuring of college and university campuses and the inclusion of minority groups in the academic world. These studies base their findings on analyses that employ concepts related to race and on the examination of mechanisms in institutions of higher learning that replicate the inequalities existing in society as a whole. We can utilize these studies in order to better understand the Israeli college/university campus.

Special attention should be given to the Critical Race Theory, which centers on institutional racialization. This theory can be used to examine academic institutions from the standpoint of their mechanisms promoting “whiteness” and to consider the manner in which such institutions are built. The central argument raised by scholars utilizing this theory is that in the past, “whiteness” was a social category that was neither diagnosed nor marked, in contrast with “colored” categories, and this created a mental blindness regarding the role of the majority society and its institutions in the inclusion of the members of minority groups in academia.

It can be concluded that from the theoretical perspective, scholars analyzing mechanisms promoting “whiteness” assume that instead of examining the obstacles preventing the members of minority groups from effectively integrating themselves into the academic community, attention should be directed toward the mechanisms that create and then perpetuate “whiteness” or priority for members of “white” society. According to these scholars, the academic world is “racialized” and cannot be considered neutral from the racial standpoint. The paradigms and ideas of the members of the dominant racial group are invested in, and define, the academic institution’s organizational space [24]. It should be emphasized that the racialization of the academic space is not carried out deliberately and that the privileges of the group for which the academic space is unconsciously molded are perceived as self-understood and not as a subject that is problematic.

The results of this racialization transform the academic space into a sphere that offends, and has many negative implications for, the members of minority groups who are students in a racialized college or university. In a racialized academic institution, students belonging to a minority group are liable to experience discrimination—open or concealed— as well as rejection; lack of support, protection, or self-confidence; even fear of physical injury [19]. In the United States, even if an institution is not explicitly racist, it bears within its walls a history of racial exclusion that continues to linger [25].

Scholars in this field have noted that success in the creation of a supportive climate for students from minority groups is generally linked to the position of the academic institution regarding the integration of the members of minority groups [26].

In Israel, the country’s academic institutions were founded by Jews and for Jews, and the privileges these institutions provide to Jewish students perpetuate the inequality between Jews and Arabs. This inequality is particularly prominent in the considerable number of Israeli colleges and universities that do not promote the presence of Arabic and Arab culture on campus.

4.3 The place of Arabic on Israeli campuses

The importance of language goes far beyond the transmission of messages. Language is not just a collection of phonological, morphological, and syntactical structures, not just a vehicle for the transmission of messages but is rather a social and political declaration. In other words, a language is a message in itself [27]. Language is a basic tool for the expression of every human and social activity, expresses culture and identity, and has verbal and nonverbal aspects that embody a given cultural and social reality [28].

The place of a language in any context is sensitive and emotionally charged because, in its creation of systems that will institutionalize and preserve its language, a minority group depends on the majority group. The state has certain duties regarding the language of an aboriginal minority group. In contrast with aboriginal language minorities, which have comprehensive language rights, immigrant language minorities have limited language rights [29].

4.4 The culture of a minority group in academic settings

Students who are members of a minority group experience social and cultural alienation because they sense that their academic institution discriminates against their culture. They note that there is social segregation in the common spaces on campus and that there is invisible interracial competition. As noted above, since social events on campus represent, and are oriented toward, the students who belong to the majority group on campus, the members of the various minority groups sense that they are excluded from these events, and as a result, they experience feelings of anger, frustration, and powerlessness.

The culture of a minority group is often transparent on a “white” campus. As noted above, “white” culture is perceived as neutral, as the culture of “everyone,” which eliminates the need for the visibility of any other culture. The minority group’s feeling of belonging to the academic space is undermined when the cultural “markers” represent only the dominant culture on campus.

4.5 The extent of Arabic and Arab culture’s presence on Israeli campuses

In Israel, ethnic origin is extremely important and is expressed in all spheres of life. Institutions of higher learning are closely connected to the national sociopolitical context in which they are situated. The conflicts and tensions between Jews and Arabs outside the walls of the country’s academic institutions are replicated on campuses in Israel and strongly influence the relations between Jewish and Arab students, as well as between Arab students and their academic institution’s administrative and teaching staffs. The lack of sufficient communication between Arab students and administrative and teaching staff members is directly related to the fact that the knowledge of Arabic among these staff members is either inadequate or nonexistent.

A discussion of the place of Arabic in Israel in general and in the academic sphere in particular is particularly relevant to the issue of Arabic’s presence on Israeli college and university campuses.

Arabic plays a highly important role in the life of Palestinian Arab students in Israel. Among Palestinian Arab students in Israel, Arabic has a vital symbolic aspect, which, for these students, is the language’s most significant aspect [13].

In the reality of Israel today, the use of Arabic on college and university campuses in Israel is not always received with welcoming arms. Arab lecturers who speak Arabic in the classroom often face opposition from the Jewish students sitting in that classroom and receive no backing from their superiors [30].

5. Conclusion

Despite the increase in the number of Palestinian Arab students, the Israeli academic world has not yet made Arab language and culture visible on the country’s college and university campuses, except for a few isolated institutions of higher learning that display sensitivity toward Arab language and culture.

Generally speaking, the climate in Israeli college and university campuses is cold with regard to Palestinian Arab students. On these campuses, one clearly senses the presence of a history of ethnic exclusion, and special privileges are enjoyed by the Jewish students, for example, in the structure of the academic year, in the curriculum, in the attitudes of administrative and teaching staff members, and in the meager reporting on issues connected with the relationship between Arab and Jewish students.

The small number of research studies on the issue of the difficulties and cultural exclusion of Arab students attending institutions of higher learning in Israel is evidence either of a general lack of interest in this issue or of a reluctance to place it on the agenda. For example, there is little material in the professional literature on the role of teaching faculty and decision-makers with regard to that issue. The questions that therefore must be asked are: What role are Israeli academic institutions playing in the development of a comfortable multicultural climate that could enable Arab students to feel at home on the country’s college and university campuses? Should they also play a role in the cultivation of a multicultural civic discourse between all the students who attend these institutions, a discourse that could serve as a model for a parallel discourse in Israeli society as a whole?

I have tried here to present a picture, even if only a partial one, of the problems involving the integration of members of minority groups in Israeli academia, but I have not attempted to offer immediate solutions to these problems. In light of what I have presented above, here are some ideas that might help decision-makers formulate such solutions:

1. Promotion of a feeling of belonging among Arab students through the hiring of Arab-speaking administrative and teaching personnel and through the increased visibility of Arabic on college and university campuses.

2. Orientation workshops for administrative and teaching staff members aimed at increasing their effectiveness regarding, and sensitivity toward, the members of different national groups.

3. Provision of a multicultural character to learning material and to the discourse on college and university campuses in order to increase cultural sensitivity in Israeli academia.

4. Inclusion of questions regarding cultural sensitivity on the evaluation questionnaires that students fill out on their lecturers.

5. Support for first-year students belonging to different national groups in the acquisition and reinforcement of essential academic skills.