Ha'aretz.com

Professors awarded $10,000 peace prize

June 6, 2005

By Daphna Berman

U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer this week awarded two professors, an Israeli and a Palestinian, a $10,000 prize for the development of a joint history project that aimed to break down barriers of hatred between the two peoples.

As part of the Institute of International Education's inaugural Goldberg IIE Prize for Peace in the Middle East, professors Dan Bar-On and Sami Adwan were selected for the award in recognition of a history project entitled "Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative."

For their joint venture, the researchers developed a shared history booklet for 15- and 16-year-olds in each school system, in which the students read the history of the other people alongside their own, so they could understand the historical narratives of their neighbors.

"Political leaders and governments have so far been unable to bring lasting peace to this troubled area," Victor J. Goldberg, executive committee member and former vice chairman of the IIE, stated in his letter to the award recipients.

"Hatred and fear of `the other' abound. While there is no magic solution, one positive force may be to encourage people to live and work together at the grass-roots level, learning to trust and depend on one another for their common good."

The IIE is an independent and nonprofit global education organization that has designed a number of training programs for students, including the Fulbright Student and Scholar programs, which is administered for the United States State Department.

The selection committe for the prize includes leading experts from academic, NGO and governmental backgrounds.

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