Interfaith dialogue. Intercultural living. Interreligious understanding. Harmonious coexistence. What do these words even mean? As a student attempting to get a well rounded liberal arts education, you take a lot of classes about broad ideas and principles which are put up on a pedestal as ideals for societies to aspire towards. You do a lot of talking and theorizing and postulating and as some would say, bullshitting, but it can be hard to find a forum to actually put all these ideas into practice. I think our house has been making strides toward that goal this year.
Our first round of programming has consisted of dialogue sessions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Every week, a small group of people get together to do some more talking. But instead of the academic setting of a classroom, the backdrop is our living room. In lieu of a lecture and debate, we have informal conversation about our opinions. In the past, in classes I have taken on this subject, it was easy to find moderate viewpoints. People were interested in learning about both the narratives and engaging in informed academic discussion. When I went to the Middle East for a semester, it was the opposite. Everybody was on a side and there was little room for a middle ground. I guess it makes a huge difference when you're actually living through a conflict versus observing it from afar. Now that I'm back at Georgetown, I'm trying to reconcile both ways of looking at things.
That is what I think our dialogue sessions are attempting to achieve: the expression of opinions in a safe space without watering them down but with the goal of learning from each other.
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