Capstone Project · Research
When Dialogue Feels Impossible
A qualitative study of why UC Berkeley students avoid cross-ideological conversations about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and what it would take to change that.
UC Berkeley is an optimal place to study cross-ideological dialogue due to its culture of student activism, politically engaged population, and emphasis on promoting identity and individualism. Since October 7th, 2023, the Israel-Palestine conflict has become one of the most emotionally and morally charged issues on campus, and has developed into a social psychology issue worth studying. Protests have spread across higher learning institutions nationwide, including at UC Berkeley, and the university administration's response, along with debates over free speech, safety, and whose pain is most valid, have become additional categories of conflict.
Even with all the visible political activity, many students I spoke with described feeling that genuine conversations on the topic have become scarcer and more difficult. People talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict more, but not in a way that builds and unites the community at UC Berkeley. This project tries to understand why that is.
"If you come into something expecting to prove why someone's wrong, you're never gonna understand why they think they're right, and thereby you're never gonna actually get to the root of the issue."
Student B, member of Jewish organization"I don't think we need to be even connected to it. We just need to be human."
Student C, international studentWhat the interviews revealed
Three themes emerged consistently across all five interviews. Together, they highlight the most consistent patterns that were most useful for understanding why cross-ideological dialogue surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict can feel and be so difficult.
Theme 01
An expectation that dialogue will fail
The most consistent pattern across interviews was that students had decided cross-ideological dialogue would fail before a conversation could even take place. Most participants described having the assumption that the other side was not going to change, and that engaging was pointless. This is less a reaction to a single negative experience, but rather a broad conclusion that shapes whether they decide to engage at all. The problem was not necessarily that these conversations go badly when they occur, but that students' expectations of inauthentic dialogue take precedent before they go in-depth on actual disagreements.
Theme 02
The costs of cross-ideological dialogue
Even though most participants generally expect cross-ideological dialogue to fail, that alone does not explain why students avoid engaging. Another significant pattern emerged in that participants were selective about when and how they engaged, and careful about how much of themselves they revealed, depending on who they were talking to. That selectivity was driven by two different but related costs, emotional and social, that can make authentic engagement feel too risky. Students are not just deciding what to say, but have to account for how they will be interpreted by their audience, which takes a lot of effort and risk. In cross-ideological spaces where expressing yourself can have social and emotional consequences, most participants defaulted to a more guarded version of themselves.
Theme 03
Uneven exposure to information and perspectives
The third theme relates to a societal phenomenon that, once again, influences dialogue before it starts. Even when students are willing to engage in cross-ideological dialogue, they rarely are working from the same pool of information. Participants described coming to conversations with very different experiences and exposures to the conflict, whether they learned about it through academic study, personal relationships, or social media. What connects these experiences is that none of them reflect bad intentions or an unwillingness to learn. They demonstrate the reality that students come to these conversations from genuinely different places, shaped by different sources of information and different senses of what is at stake.
What this means
These three themes reinforce each other. Students who already expect failure are unlikely to absorb the emotional and social cost of trying. And without shared informational ground, even the students who do try often leave more frustrated than when they started. The result is a campus where a lot of conversation about this conflict is happening, but mostly within groups, not across them. As prior research on out-group contact makes clear, it is sustained engagement across differences that actually reverses polarization. Staying within communities that feel safe keeps emotions manageable, but it does not help the two sides understand each other.
What seems most needed, based on what participants described, is not asking students to try harder but creating structural conditions that make cross-ideological dialogue feel more possible. Campus events and resources explicitly oriented toward bridging rather than solely advocacy would help by giving students models for what constructive cross-ideological engagement actually looks like. The goal does not have to be agreement or changing opinions. Based on the findings, something simpler, like reducing the perceived cost of engaging and interrupting the cycle of avoidance, would already be a meaningful step in the right direction. That is part of what this website is trying to offer.
"The best way to get people to understand other perspectives is to show them what is the emotional core of the other side's argument."
Student DWho I spoke with
All participants are identified by letter to protect their privacy. They were recruited through personal outreach and a College of Letters and Science email newsletter, and leaned politically left to moderate.
Student A
Political science · Middle Eastern background
Student B
Political science · Member of Jewish organization
Student C
Neuroscience · International student
Student D
History · Asian-American
Student E
Legal studies · Jewish background
A note on method and positionality
Interviews were semi-structured, lasted 20 to 30 minutes, and were conducted in person or via Zoom in April 2026. Transcripts were coded inductively, meaning themes emerged from the data rather than being determined in advance. As a Palestinian-American student at UC Berkeley, I brought my own perspective to this work. I practiced reflexivity by keeping questions focused on participants' descriptions of their experiences rather than their views on the conflict itself.