Yet again, we find ourselves confronted over the past week by a highly contentious set of political events that simultaneously a) need and require us to analyse and discuss them and b) need and require us to be mindful of how difficult that is to do without people finding and taking offence in the way we do that.
As someone with absolutely no research expertise or teaching activity relating to Israel-Palestine, those challenges are less than they might be for you (although my session on French politics last week did drift more than once onto the topic).
Here at ALPS Blog, we’ve been going long enough to have considered this at various points. As much as each case is specific, we do have some pieces that might prove useful for you to read and draw on.
- Keeping up to speed with fast-moving events
- Handling student questions
- Using cats to help out
- Managing difficult conversations
- The question of ‘what do you think should happen?‘
There’s also a growing literature for you to explore on all of this.
And as always, if you’ve found something else that works – or have found that these ideas don’t work – then we’d love to hear from you, either in the comments or with a guest post.