Dartmouth Senior Owen Seiner, NBC News photo May 2024

NBC News - This Ivy League school took a novel approach to easing tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war. Did it work?

"What we did is our job," said one Dartmouth professor. "And our job is to teach, our job is not to advocate."

Threats and assaults toward Jewish, Muslim, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students on college campuses have been on the rise since the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel and the counterattacks in Gaza that have followed.

But at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, students from those same groups told NBC News they still feel safe and credit, in large part, the college’s novel approach to the issue: talking about it.

Sophomore Ramsey Alsheikh, a Muslim and son of a Palestinian refugee, remembers on Oct. 10 walking into his class on the 1967 war between Israel and Arab states. The class included Jewish, Muslim and Christian students and they had been discussing Arab and Israeli relations all fall; now those issues were playing out once again, in real time.

Pictured: Dartmouth senior Owen Seiner is Jewish and says the professor-led discussions on campus have helped ease tensions that have followed the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel and the counterattacks in Gaza. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dartmouth-easing-tensions-sparked-israel-hamas-war-rcna126594