Minority Languages in Academia: The Arabic Language in the Israeli Academy

Although they constitute twenty percent of Israel’s citizens, Arabs have no significant opportunity to study their own language in Israel’s academic institutions. Academic courses are conducted in Hebrew, the official language of the country. This has implications for the Arab students’ academic achievement as well as for their sense of belonging on Israeli campuses. In the framework of a graduate program on exclusion, the Academic College of Education has recently introduced two courses in Arabic—a revolutionary experiment in the Israeli academic world. Based on interviews with twenty Arab students who participated in these courses, the research presented here demonstrates how these courses not only enhance the students’ self-expression, participation, and self-confidence in the classroom; they also send a message to the Arab students that the college sees them and acknowledges their identity. The study has implications for the growing multi-cultural reality of academic institutions elsewhere in the world.