The Tom Lantos Institute joined the Mobilities, Transitions, Transformations – Intercultural Education at the Crossroads, the annual conference of the International Association for Intercultural Education that took place in Budapest from 5 to 9 September.

TLI awarded seven scholarships to support early career researchers and practitioners proposing innovative approaches to intercultural education.

They presented on:
• Brigitta Czók from Eszterházy Károly University of Applied Sciences, Hungary: “Learning Study: One of the Fields of Cooperation between Teachers and Students”;
• Yasin Duman from Sabancı University, Turkey: “Transformation of Kurdish Identity through Education in Native Language in Rojava (Northern Syria)”;
• Francesco Argenio Benaroio from Anamuh – Arts for Dialogue, Budapest, Hungary: “The Theatre of the Oppressed Community Work in Hungary”;
• Irma Husic from the University College of Southeast Norway: “A Programme for Human Rights and Reconciliation? Students’ Perceptions of Service Learning at the United World College Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina”;
• Jelena Doslov from Gimnazija Banjaluka, Bosnia and Herzegovina: “Request for Rights and Dignity in Human Rights Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina”;
• Justyna Langowska from Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland: “Intercultural Education in EuroMed. In between the Values”;
• Adelina Stefarta from ULIM Moldova: “Israel’s Dilemmas Receiving Immigrants from Ethiopia: Social and Educational Variables”.

Furthermore, the TLI took part in facilitating several plenary and panel sessions on teachers’ experiences in intercultural education, implementation of intercultural education in schools, students’ perspectives on intercultural education, multicultural education from an East Asian perspective, the need for multicultural schools and took part in the launching of the book of Professor Audrey Osler “Human Rights and Schooling – An Ethical Framework for Teaching for Social Justice” (2016, Teachers College Press).

The conference raised many stimulating questions: What is a heritage language? How do Japanese schools adapt to religious diversity? How do teachers position themselves towards anti-radicalisation programmes in Norwegian schools? How do Hungarian teachers understand and experience multiculturalism? Some speakers addressed controversial issues such as the use of “anti-radicalisation programmes” in schools, which comes with a potentially new role for teachers who are implicitly asked to police their students, and the high risk this entails; the arguably too heavy focus on intercultural projects in schools, which usually benefit the most privileged people while overlooking – if not silencing – other crucial elements such as oppression, inequalities and even racism; the tension between the universal understanding of human rights versus citizenship, that has been up until now understood in national terms only, thus excluding an important part of the population. Last but not least, an important critique was addressed to human rights education, which often targets so-called newcomers rather than the whole population, while being used or even seen as a response to conflicts rather than a teaching that is fundamental in and for itself.