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About this episode

"Answering Obama’s Call: An Open Conversation About The Palestinian-Zionist Conflict"with Dan WalshIn February of 2008 then-candidate Barack Obama said:“…one of the things that struck me when I went to Israel was how much more open the debate was…I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation…I'm saying though that actually, ultimately, should be our goal...” Source.Dan Walsh will present parts of a new high school curriculum specifically designed to open up the conversation President Obama alluded to in 2008. This new curriculum titled: Teaching the Formative History of Political Zionism (1897-1947) through Poster Art: A Plain Language/Language Rights Curriculum Model for American High School Educators uses historical poster art to engage American students and teachers in a more open, natural conversation about the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. It differs from existing high school teaching resources that cover the conflict in a number of ways including that it is dedicated to the concept of “civic competence”. This approach puts the students needs for jargon-free language foremost and evaluates its usefulness based on whether or not the students can carry on a civil and historically holistic discussion about the conflict. All lessons include opportunities for students to analyze the content of Zionist and/or Palestinian nationalist posters—symbols, colors, texts, styles—allowing them to engage their own critical faculties.Dan Walsh is a graduate student at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He was first introduced to the Palestine poster genre as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the mid-1970’s. While there he collected several hundred Palestine posters. Over the years he has continued to acquire Palestine poster art and he now curates what many specialists believe to be the largest such archives in the world, containing approximately three thousand original posters. Press TV news story here. Dan Walsh's PowerPoint outline here.

• Category

  News & Politics

• Release Date

  Apr 15, 2009

• Runtime

  01:19:11