Highlights from the 4th School for Peace Alumni Conference

In December 2025, we held the 4th Alumni Conference of the School for Peace – a two-day gathering attended by approximately 100 alumni from across our different courses and from all years of our work.

We hold this conference each year in order to create and sustain a space for our alumni that exists nowhere else: a place to meet people who share a similar worldview, and who have also undergone our unique inter-identity dialogue process. It is a space for personal and professional connection, for learning together, for sharpening a political analysis of reality, and for recharging the energy needed to continue working toward change.

This year’s conference theme was: “Living in an Ongoing Catastrophe: Between Dispossession and Erasure and the Building of Impact.” Within a reality marked by annihilation, trauma, violence, abandonment, and systemic breakdown, we asked together how it is possible to continue living and acting – with responsibility, critical thinking, and a commitment to justice, partnership and repair.

At the heart of the conference is dialogue in fixed groups, with five dialogue sessions – both binational and uninational – held over the two days. Alongside these, additional sessions took place: on the first day, a panel with Amal Oraby and Orly Noy offered sharp political readings of the conference theme; in the evening, the film “The Sea,” an Oscar-nominated co-production by Jewish and Palestinian creators, was screened, telling the story of a Palestinian boy prevented from reaching the sea; and on the second day, the “From the Ground: Alumni in Action” session provided exposure to five initiatives led by our alumni on the ground.

For us, the conference served as a reminder of the power of a reflective and committed political community: one that does not turn away from pain, does not obscure power relations, and does not give up on action and impact – even within an ongoing catastrophe.