The Arab Lecturer on a Zionist Campus: Student Practices Replicating National Hegemony

Abstract

Minority groups tend to experience the academic campus as unpleasant and excluding. Relevant literature attempts to analyze the position of these groups, using terms such as ‘race’ and investigating how higher education institution mechanisms replicate the inequality between the minority group and the hegemonic majority population. In Israel, unresolved problems cause continuing tension between two national groups: citizens who are members of the Palestinian Arab minority (PAMI) and citizens from the Jewish majority. This article focuses on relations between PAMI and Jews on Israeli campuses by drawing upon insights from American research, but it replaces the term ‘race’ with ‘nationality.’ Academe is the only place in Israel where the Arab lecturer is in a position of power vis-à-vis the Jewish student. The study presents this encounter from the viewpoint of the lecturer, drawing on data from interviews with 56 PAMI lecturers in public and private Israeli universities and colleges. The findings indicate that Jewish students use various strategies to divest Arab lecturers of their elevated status in academe.