Events & Activities
An international conference on "Multiculturalism, Diversity and Inclusion: Widening Access and Participation in Education Systems" was held on May 15, 2023, at the Faculty of Education led by Prof. Zehavit Gross, Dean of faculty. The conference was the first of a series of future events on diversity, equity and inclusion in education systems. Prof. Pascale Benoliel was the Chair of the conference and Dr. Ornit Spector-Levi and Dr. Annette Bamberger were members of the academic committee. The conference dealt with the diverse challenges and activities to promote multiculturalism, inclusion and equity in higher education. The purpose of the conference was to deepen our understanding regarding research-based interventions that were successful in improving diversity and inclusion in higher education institutions as well as developing a knowledge-based network for implementing innovative policies and practices to deal with the challenges of multiculturalism.
The conference included lectures of Keynotes and guest speakers from abroad - from Great Britain (Prof. Liam Gearon from the University of Oxford), Italy (Prof. Silvia Guetta from the University of Florence), Australia (Prof. Susan Rutland from the University of Sydney) and Poland (Prof. Anna Balas from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań). The conference was also attended by Guest speakers from the University Haifa (Dr. Adi Sapir) and the Kibbutzim Seminar (Dr. Simcha Gathon) and posters from researchers from Bar Ilan University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Ben Gurion University. The conference program included comments and intervention from discussants, among them Prof. Malka Schaps, who is an ultra-Orthodox woman who served as a dean of the Faculty of Exact Sciences, and even a panel of graduate students, who represent cultural underrepresented population in higher education in Israeli society, and shared the challenges they experience during their studies.
More than 200 students and members of the academic faculty of the Faculty of Education participated in the conference. It was an ovation to the topic. The atmosphere that prevailed at the conference was inspiring. The new immigrant, ultra-Orthodox and Arab students who presented their posters stood out by their presence and visibility. Importantly, it was special to hear in the compound space where the conference was held, and which was crowded with people, not only Hebrew but additional languages such as Arabic, French, English, Russian and even Yiddish.
Prof. Gross, the dean of the Faculty of Education appointed Prof. Pascal Benoliel to serve as the faculty's representative for diversity, equity and inclusion and she will continue to be active in this field.
According to Prof. Gross: "The conference is a day of unity in higher education whose purpose is to produce a unifying discourse between different groups of students coming from all sectors of Israeli society and its purpose is to give visibility to the transparent students who come from the social periphery, to make them ambassadors of social change and to develop a series of quantitative and qualitative studies on this important subject of diversity, equity and inclusion”
The conference was held with the support of Israeli Hope in Academia and the Vice President for Research Affairs.
A booklet of the conference for more details
Contact information
feel free to contact the committee members or the ambassadors
